Concern for the protection of women’s lives in anti-abortion laws is not a pro-choice ploy. It’s a p

[Aštra’el]

You work at an IVF clinic. A fire breaks out. You can save either the last toddler in the company's day care, or a case of a dozen viable embryos in the freezer, but there is not time for both. Do you save the one or the many? If you answered the embryos, you are consistent. Why worry about the one toddler but not the dozen "babies"? But most people would save the child.

I can clearly imagine what one of my greatest teachers would have to say.

“Twelve more human beings may one day owe you their lives… as opposed to just the one. You understand which choice is more advantageous.”

 

[Alien826]

I am sick and tired of religious people imposing their so called morality on others. From, some time ago, when an Irish guy in England told me that he would take condoms with him when he visited Ireland, to sell at a profit. To when I couldn't get a beer with my lunch because it was before noon on a Sunday. To the guy in Georgia that was jailed for having consensual oral sex. To gay people that were jailed for being what they were.

I say ENOUGH ALREADY!

Listen up you bigots. If you believe that something is right or wrong because of your religion, the last thing I would do is to suggest that you should not personally follow your consciences. So why don't you accord me the same courtesy?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I can clearly imagine what one of my greatest teachers would have to say. “Twelve more human beings may one day owe you their lives… as opposed to just the one. You understand which choice is more advantageous.”

OK. That's an arguable position, and you are being consistent valuing the embryos more than the child because there are more of them. I would grab the child, and I think most other people would. The reason is because I would hear her screaming as I ran out with the dozen balls of tissue that would not have suffered. My conscience wouldn't let me do that.

The point is that we don't think of a toddler and the embryos as having equal value in this artificial situation even though there are more of the latter. Call them human, call them people, call them babies or children, but in the end, they're not the same as the toddler even in the minds of most people advocating against the woman having a choice.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Does it include being counted in the Census while in utero? Being claimed as a dependent on taxes while in utero? Hmm... the Catholic church does not hold a mass of Christian burial for a miscarried or aborted fetus--maybe they and other churches should have to do that kind of thing?

It's been done. Mass and burial for the unborn held - PNC News First

 

[Wildswanderer]

Most people recognise abortion is a human right, some are troubled by it but also recognise it's not their decision, but a minority of intolerant bigots, who like to pretend they "care" about an insentient clump of cells, like to insist others must live according to their beliefs, when the truth is they simply can't cope with anyone living their lives and not caring about the archaic beliefs others seem to think trump human autonomy.

If you anyone doesn't like abortions, then they don't have to have one.

That's like saying if I don't approve of murder the solution is not to kill anyone myself but let everyone else do it.

 

[Orbit]

You are worried about the one in a million exception but not the millions of aborted babies.

One third of all pregnancies miscarry in the first trimester. Ectopic pregnancies are not "one in a million". Do some research before you post nonsense.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Vast majority is still not all. Also stats?
Just curious

from 1980 to 2000 – 99.31% of abortions annually were for non-therapeutic reasons.

Abortionist Don Sloan, who has performed abortions for decades, says that a situation where the mother’s life is endangered by her pregnancy is extremely rare:

“If a woman with a serious illness- heart disease, say, or diabetes- gets pregnant, the abortion procedure may be as dangerous for her as going through pregnancy … with diseases like lupus, multiple sclerosis, even breast cancer, the chance that pregnancy will make the disease worse is no greater that the chance that the disease will either stay the same or improve. And medical technology has advanced to a point where even women with diabetes and kidney disease can be seen through a pregnancy safely by a doctor who knows what he’s doing. We’ve come a long way since my mother’s time….The idea of abortion to save the mothers’ life is something that people cling to because it sounds noble and pure- but medically speaking, it probably doesn’t exist. It’s a real stretch of our thinking.”

Don Sloan, M.D. and Paula Hartz. Choice: A Doctor’s Experience with the Abortion Dilemma. New York: International Publishers 2002 P 45-46

 

[ppp]

I don't play stupid " what if" games. They are all humans.

I would rescue the infant and leave the embryos to burn. If you had the courage of your convictions you would accept the ramifications of those convictions. But instead you dodge. I have only ever heard one antichoice person actually stand behind their own words when faced with that hypothetical choice.

 

[SomeRandom]

from 1980 to 2000 – 99.31% of abortions annually were for non-therapeutic reasons.

Abortionist Don Sloan, who has performed abortions for decades, says that a situation where the mother’s life is endangered by her pregnancy is extremely rare:

“If a woman with a serious illness- heart disease, say, or diabetes- gets pregnant, the abortion procedure may be as dangerous for her as going through pregnancy … with diseases like lupus, multiple sclerosis, even breast cancer, the chance that pregnancy will make the disease worse is no greater that the chance that the disease will either stay the same or improve. And medical technology has advanced to a point where even women with diabetes and kidney disease can be seen through a pregnancy safely by a doctor who knows what he’s doing. We’ve come a long way since my mother’s time….The idea of abortion to save the mothers’ life is something that people cling to because it sounds noble and pure- but medically speaking, it probably doesn’t exist. It’s a real stretch of our thinking.”

Don Sloan, M.D. and Paula Hartz. Choice: A Doctor’s Experience with the Abortion Dilemma. New York: International Publishers 2002 P 45-46

Thank you for the information.

Maybe it might be surprising to you, but I actually oppose elective abortion on religious grounds. (Except for rape and incest. Underage pregnancy usually falls under medical necessity anyway.)

But that’s still not enough to make me want it made illegal.
What has happened in just the past few weeks alone in the US is what we’ve all witnessed in our own respective countries throughout the years.
Women carrying around dead fetuses due to the wording of a specific state law or even more heinously egregious a 10 year old child without the mental or physical capacity to even have a healthy pregnancy forced to cross state lines for a medical procedure. (Indeed even more repugnant was that such a child was basically called a liar by so called “pro life advocates.” Disgraceful behaviour to say the least!)
Those are just the ones reported on.
Ireland had a woman literally die of sepsis due to their abortion laws, again just the most well known publicised case. Not the only one.
Just because it only happens infrequently (again miscarriages are actually fairly common and ectopic pregnancies in the US are fairly common as well) doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be addressed by an overarching law meant to serve everyone’s best interests. Especially one that deals with a known biological phenomenon that affects humans in general. Not just the “vast majority.”

I mean sure it’s rather rare that a person suffers from having half of one’s skull fully form. But it still happens. A doctor isn’t just going to throw their hands in the air and declare that “oh but it’s an anomaly” when they encounter it. Ideally they will merely act on the medical information given to them through years of research and training. The best most compassionate solution is abortion in that particular case.
But if they have to constantly look over their shoulder at the law potentially giving them grief over such a decision, they’ll likely go the route of least legal resistance. Meaning they’ll likely allow the poor fetus to be birthed and allow the parent/s to watch in horror as the baby dies in front of them.
That “well it doesn’t happen that often” is cold comfort and indeed beyond cruel to tell a person suffering through such an experience.
By all means. Feel free to use that excuse on any parent suffering from such an outcome.
Just don’t be shocked if you get punched out as a result is all I’m saying

 

[The Hammer]

You are worried about the one in a million exception but not the millions of aborted babies.

 

[Clara Tea]

In my opinion there is no compromise that will be fair to a woman under these new anti-abortion laws.

Meanwhile, many pro-life Catholic thinkers have insisted that none of these laws endanger women in any way: They argue that these laws can be written in ways that will restrict abortion while allowing exceptions to handle miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and dangers to women’s lives in reasonable, commonsense ways.
But it is not at all obvious that this is true. Nor is it at all obvious that there is consensus about how to handle these situations in reasonable, commonsense ways, even within the church.
Take S.B. 8, the Texas law, which creates an exemption from liability for abortions “necessary due to a medical emergency.” What does that “necessary” mean? The law does not say. Is an abortion that would avert a 5 percent chance of death “necessary,” or must a doctor wait until the risk increases to a 25 percent chance? Is it enough to know that a mother will have a high chance of death tomorrow if the pregnancy continues?

Under both the Texas and Oklahoma laws, medical professionals who are fully confident in their diagnosis of a medical emergency and whose decisions would stand up to anyone’s moral scrutiny can still face legal liability. Because these laws allow plaintiffs, but not defendants, to recover legal costs, doctors and hospitals may be exposed to exorbitant costs defending their medical judgment against bad-faith lawsuits. It may even risk their freedom and livelihoods. Come September, if all goes according to the state’s plan, doctors in Oklahoma who are accused of performing an abortion that wasn’t sufficiently medically warranted might not just face a lawsuit but also a homicide charge.

How long after abortion is criminalized in Oklahoma will it take before a situation arises in which not a single doctor is available to perform a necessary, life-saving abortion for a woman who is too sick, or too poor, to travel elsewhere for it?

We cannot write laws that incentivize doctors to err on the side of allowing the woman to die and ignore the outcome that will result. If there are steep penalties for performing abortions that are later determined to have been unnecessary without strong mandates for doctors and hospitals to perform necessary abortions—which the church surely wants to avoid for religious liberty reasons—women will die. Not because of a renewed culture of life, but because of capitalism. We will have simply made it more costly to kill the child than to kill the mother.

The church’s moral teaching is that abortion should only be performed when the doctrine of double effect applies—when there is some morally neutral medical intervention that can save the mother while, unfortunately and unintentionally, resulting in the death of her child. It sounds simple in theory, much the same way that “necessary” seems like a sufficient legal descriptor in theory. But in practice, Catholic bioethicists are split on how and when to preserve the lives of mothers when their pregnancies become life-endangering.
Notably, under Texas’ law, at least one patient was told to wait until her ectopic pregnancy ruptured her fallopian tube—which would have put her at immediate risk of death from hemorrhage—because her doctor worried an abortion wouldn’t be sufficiently “necessary” under the law until that point.

It is time to create the space for an actual conversation. How we adjudicate these laws affects more than the unborn. Women’s lives are on the line.
We need to talk about ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in abortion law. | America Magazine

You don't have to look very hard to find pretty underaged girls, carrying their new born babies, and living on the streets. Their families, embarrassed about the scandal, and at their wits end about taming their irrepressible child, have chosen to abandon them to the street.

It is easy to feel empathy for all street people, but there are actually at least two types. One is the poor innocent little girl with a newborn (mentioned above), and the other is a thief who prefers stealing a little girl's bicycle over gainful employment. Often it is a life of Riley, in which they get all of the free sex that they want (by rape).

Grapes of Wrath (by Steinbeck) pointed out that Federal camps for the homeless (during the Great Depression) provided more than just housing, but also fresh water, and security guards. . . finally they are safe.

The abortion issue, therefore, is more than just about having babies, it is about the aftermath (homelessness on the streets, rape, hunger, and the desire to avoid public shelters at all cost because of the lack of security from rapists).

RE: abortion in emergencies. Many times, women choose to make emergencies (one got in a car crash to kill the fetus)(one was punched in her belly when she was in her 6th month of pregnancy). This forces abortions (and sometimes the fetus lives. . . only to have a miserable life of mental retardation, bad eyesight (from oxygen tent), etc.

We should not allow doctors to alter the safety (threaten killing--perhaps by a hemorrhage) in order to perform an abortion.

I think that abortion laws should be passed to the states. States that want abortion can have it, and states that don't won't have it. It opens a can of worms regarding women who travel outside of their designated borders to have an alternative treatment (perhaps an abortion in a different state if abortions are now offered in one's own state?). Do we deem that murder? Do we send the mother to jail for years for murder?

Obviously the nation is stalemated over the abortion issue. In that case, the Federal government should not decide to squelsh the desires of 1/2 of the United States.

 

[Clara Tea]

I am sick and tired of religious people imposing their so called morality on others. From, some time ago, when an Irish guy in England told me that he would take condoms with him when he visited Ireland, to sell at a profit. To when I couldn't get a beer with my lunch because it was before noon on a Sunday. To the guy in Georgia that was jailed for having consensual oral sex. To gay people that were jailed for being what they were.

I say ENOUGH ALREADY!

Listen up you bigots. If you believe that something is right or wrong because of your religion, the last thing I would do is to suggest that you should not personally follow your consciences. So why don't you accord me the same courtesy?

There should be a separation of church and state. That means that the Federal government should not respect one religion over another.

Increasingly, religious dogma is polarizing elections.

Furthermore, it seems that the religion are following Satan (must be a member of the National Rifle Association, for torture camps, and for wars (even if we were lied into having wars)). Lies were told about Senator John Kerry's war heroism (thou shalt not bear false witness) (do unto others).

Online gambling is illegal (God doesn't like it, they say).

Isn't it odd that the Religious Right, that dominated our elections with their agenda, tries to save a fetus, yet sends young men into battle.

 

[SomeRandom]

You don't have to look very hard to find pretty underaged girls, carrying their new born babies, and living on the streets. Their families, embarrassed about the scandal, and at their wits end about taming their irrepressible child, have chosen to abandon them to the street.

It is easy to feel empathy for all street people, but there are actually at least two types. One is the poor innocent little girl with a newborn (mentioned above), and the other is a thief who prefers stealing a little girl's bicycle over gainful employment. Often it is a life of Riley, in which they get all of the free sex that they want (by rape).

Grapes of Wrath (by Steinbeck) pointed out that Federal camps for the homeless (during the Great Depression) provided more than just housing, but also fresh water, and security guards. . . finally they are safe.

The abortion issue, therefore, is more than just about having babies, it is about the aftermath (homelessness on the streets, rape, hunger, and the desire to avoid public shelters at all cost because of the lack of security from rapists).

Whilst I agree that we should not seperate such empathy. Why should we give a damn about rapists in the first place? Unless I misunderstood you? Who cares about rapists?
If a woman can’t securely feed, house and clothe a newborn, maybe abortion is a more compassionate option in that scenario?
Not to say we shouldn’t also have shelters to house unwanted newborn infants, obviously. Rapists shouldn’t even come into consideration. Unless it’s to decide how long the scum spend in prison for their crime

RE: abortion in emergencies. Many times, women choose to make emergencies (one got in a car crash to kill the fetus)(one was punched in her belly when she was in her 6th month of pregnancy). This forces abortions (and sometimes the fetus lives. . . only to have a miserable life of mental retardation, bad eyesight (from oxygen tent), etc.
Many times a doctor will inevitably make a life or death decision, allowing one to live and another to perish.

Often times that’s not the goal of said decision but it is the result. That’s just medical science.
If a pregnant woman is in a medical emergency, the doctor will prioritise her life over the fetus. That’s not because the doctor inherently values her life over the fetus, just that that is the most viable option according to science. Do you wish us to ignore science??
We should not allow doctors to alter the safety (threaten killing--perhaps by a hemorrhage) in order to perform an abortion.
Sometimes that’s not a viable option. Medical science disagrees. Sorry if that’s harsh but it’s reality.

I think that abortion laws should be passed to the states. States that want abortion can have it, and states that don't won't have it. It opens a can of worms regarding women who travel outside of their designated borders to have an alternative treatment (perhaps an abortion in a different state if abortions are now offered in one's own state?). Do we deem that murder? Do we send the mother to jail for years for murder?

And if a person is in need of a life saving abortion that her state doesn’t have on the books, but can’t travel for whatever reason? Should she just die? Should that really be her fate? Because that’s what happens if you leave it to the states. The rest of the world figure that out years ago, ffs
Just how behind are you guys anyway?

Obviously the nation is stalemated over the abortion issue. In that case, the Federal government should not decide to squelsh the desires of 1/2 of the United States.

The United States right now is a joke on the world stage. A backwards dystopian place that everyone and their grandmother had warned them not to become. Sorry but they have no real leg to stand on in this scenario. Even heavily Catholic/religious states are pointing and laughing at their abysmal state of affairs. And for once can do so.

 

[PruePhillip]

In my opinion there is no compromise that will be fair to a woman under these new anti-abortion laws.

Meanwhile, many pro-life Catholic thinkers have insisted that none of these laws endanger women in any way: They argue that these laws can be written in ways that will restrict abortion while allowing exceptions to handle miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and dangers to women’s lives in reasonable, commonsense ways.
But it is not at all obvious that this is true. Nor is it at all obvious that there is consensus about how to handle these situations in reasonable, commonsense ways, even within the church.
Take S.B. 8, the Texas law, which creates an exemption from liability for abortions “necessary due to a medical emergency.” What does that “necessary” mean? The law does not say. Is an abortion that would avert a 5 percent chance of death “necessary,” or must a doctor wait until the risk increases to a 25 percent chance? Is it enough to know that a mother will have a high chance of death tomorrow if the pregnancy continues?

Under both the Texas and Oklahoma laws, medical professionals who are fully confident in their diagnosis of a medical emergency and whose decisions would stand up to anyone’s moral scrutiny can still face legal liability. Because these laws allow plaintiffs, but not defendants, to recover legal costs, doctors and hospitals may be exposed to exorbitant costs defending their medical judgment against bad-faith lawsuits. It may even risk their freedom and livelihoods. Come September, if all goes according to the state’s plan, doctors in Oklahoma who are accused of performing an abortion that wasn’t sufficiently medically warranted might not just face a lawsuit but also a homicide charge.

How long after abortion is criminalized in Oklahoma will it take before a situation arises in which not a single doctor is available to perform a necessary, life-saving abortion for a woman who is too sick, or too poor, to travel elsewhere for it?

We cannot write laws that incentivize doctors to err on the side of allowing the woman to die and ignore the outcome that will result. If there are steep penalties for performing abortions that are later determined to have been unnecessary without strong mandates for doctors and hospitals to perform necessary abortions—which the church surely wants to avoid for religious liberty reasons—women will die. Not because of a renewed culture of life, but because of capitalism. We will have simply made it more costly to kill the child than to kill the mother.

The church’s moral teaching is that abortion should only be performed when the doctrine of double effect applies—when there is some morally neutral medical intervention that can save the mother while, unfortunately and unintentionally, resulting in the death of her child. It sounds simple in theory, much the same way that “necessary” seems like a sufficient legal descriptor in theory. But in practice, Catholic bioethicists are split on how and when to preserve the lives of mothers when their pregnancies become life-endangering.
Notably, under Texas’ law, at least one patient was told to wait until her ectopic pregnancy ruptured her fallopian tube—which would have put her at immediate risk of death from hemorrhage—because her doctor worried an abortion wouldn’t be sufficiently “necessary” under the law until that point.

It is time to create the space for an actual conversation. How we adjudicate these laws affects more than the unborn. Women’s lives are on the line.
We need to talk about ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in abortion law. | America Magazine

I like Peter Singer's point of view, a mother or father should be able to terminate the life of a child up to the age of five if there's some serious disability with the child. Also, if this child is effecting the mental health of the parents. Kind of like how we can euthenase our grandparents now when they feel they are just a burden to us.

 

[wellwisher]

Another way to look at abortion is with a parallel to slavery, but not from the POV of the slave, but from the POV of the slave owner. The USA became divided in the 1860's and the Civil War was fought because of this slave owner POV that lingered in spite of a widening push for slave rights.

The slave owner saw their slaves as private property and not as a human beings. To them the slave was no different than a horse or a plow, which they legally bought at the store and thereby owned by legal means.

Because of their ownership of private property they felt had the right do as they pleased with the slaves, up and including the death penalty. They had an entitlement mentality that could not see slaves as part of humanity. This did change, after the war was lost. The Southern Democrats who lost the war vowed to rise again, but did so in a different guise of slave owner.

 

[firedragon]

In my opinion there is no compromise that will be fair to a woman under these new anti-abortion laws.

Meanwhile, many pro-life Catholic thinkers have insisted that none of these laws endanger women in any way: They argue that these laws can be written in ways that will restrict abortion while allowing exceptions to handle miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and dangers to women’s lives in reasonable, commonsense ways.
But it is not at all obvious that this is true. Nor is it at all obvious that there is consensus about how to handle these situations in reasonable, commonsense ways, even within the church.
Take S.B. 8, the Texas law, which creates an exemption from liability for abortions “necessary due to a medical emergency.” What does that “necessary” mean? The law does not say. Is an abortion that would avert a 5 percent chance of death “necessary,” or must a doctor wait until the risk increases to a 25 percent chance? Is it enough to know that a mother will have a high chance of death tomorrow if the pregnancy continues?

Under both the Texas and Oklahoma laws, medical professionals who are fully confident in their diagnosis of a medical emergency and whose decisions would stand up to anyone’s moral scrutiny can still face legal liability. Because these laws allow plaintiffs, but not defendants, to recover legal costs, doctors and hospitals may be exposed to exorbitant costs defending their medical judgment against bad-faith lawsuits. It may even risk their freedom and livelihoods. Come September, if all goes according to the state’s plan, doctors in Oklahoma who are accused of performing an abortion that wasn’t sufficiently medically warranted might not just face a lawsuit but also a homicide charge.

How long after abortion is criminalized in Oklahoma will it take before a situation arises in which not a single doctor is available to perform a necessary, life-saving abortion for a woman who is too sick, or too poor, to travel elsewhere for it?

We cannot write laws that incentivize doctors to err on the side of allowing the woman to die and ignore the outcome that will result. If there are steep penalties for performing abortions that are later determined to have been unnecessary without strong mandates for doctors and hospitals to perform necessary abortions—which the church surely wants to avoid for religious liberty reasons—women will die. Not because of a renewed culture of life, but because of capitalism. We will have simply made it more costly to kill the child than to kill the mother.

The church’s moral teaching is that abortion should only be performed when the doctrine of double effect applies—when there is some morally neutral medical intervention that can save the mother while, unfortunately and unintentionally, resulting in the death of her child. It sounds simple in theory, much the same way that “necessary” seems like a sufficient legal descriptor in theory. But in practice, Catholic bioethicists are split on how and when to preserve the lives of mothers when their pregnancies become life-endangering.
Notably, under Texas’ law, at least one patient was told to wait until her ectopic pregnancy ruptured her fallopian tube—which would have put her at immediate risk of death from hemorrhage—because her doctor worried an abortion wouldn’t be sufficiently “necessary” under the law until that point.

It is time to create the space for an actual conversation. How we adjudicate these laws affects more than the unborn. Women’s lives are on the line.
We need to talk about ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in abortion law. | America Magazine

I think it's true that exceptions must be afforded in special cases. I am agnostic about general abortion laws of new pregnancies. Must research further. But in case of medical emergencies it should be considered. Even in rape victims it should be considered.

 

[pearl]

Why should women or the left compromise at all with a religious belief?

It would be interesting to see where we are on the issue as a country by placing the abortion issue on the ballot and the result binding.

 

[pearl]

Not just their physical lives, there is their emotional wellbeing as well.

That's a significant concern, the emotional cost is often ignored. Even in women who want their baby are sometimes left in a delicate state of mind post birth, imagine when birth was forced upon the mother.

 

[Hermit Philosopher]

You are worried about the one in a million exception but not the millions of aborted babies.

I’m sorry; wherever do you get this “one-in-a-million” nonsense from?

 

[Hermit Philosopher]

Your mistake is that you are using the reasoning function of your brain rather than trusting your conscience (moral intuition), and that reasoning function is failing you.

If your conscience was telling you that abortions are wrong, they would FEEL wrong, and that feeling would be followed by an urge to severely punish the wrongdoer just as it does when you hear of a cold-blooded murder.

Pro-lifers don't feel the urge to severely punish the woman for terminating her pregnancy. Instead, they want to punish those who assist her; which makes as much sense as punishing the accomplice but not the wrongdoer.

From a religious perspective, why should Man think he has authority to punish another person for “wrong-doings”. Is this not God’s job?