NYT story: Trump administration could strike abortion almost immediately using Comstock law
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Anonymous
Cancer is also a “natural” process. Club feet are also the result of a “natural” process. Molar pregnancy is also “natural.” Pregnancy was the number one killer of women before the advent of modern medicine. Just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean it has to be accepted. |
Anonymous
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So by your logic we should not have any type of medical intervention for anything. So we should all be turning in our contacts and glasses and hearing aids and walkers and canes and diabetes medication.
I mean an egg is not a chicken. Get that right |
Anonymous
Don’t be obtuse. Taking away healthcare facilities makes it more difficult for women to obtain reliable healthcare. Billboards don’t do pelvic exams. |
Anonymous
That is 100% false. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Amendment Are you lying or just stupid? |
Anonymous
Cancer is a disease. Club feet are a birth defect. Molar pregnancy is a tumor. Pregnancy is not a disease, a defect, or a tumor. The vast majority of women are capable of becoming pregnant through sexual intercourse. If they do not want to become pregnant, there are many forms of birth control available that will prevent pregnancy. There are not reliable, effective, readily available preventative methods to prevent cancer, club feet, or molar pregnancy. |
Anonymous
Pregnancy is not a disease. Abortion clinics exist because obgyns don’t perform elective abortions because pregnancy is not a disease. They are doctors that heal and use their medical skills to help women and babies, not kill healthy babies who are inconvenient. |
Anonymous
Doesn’t the ACA provide healthcare to all Americans? |
Anonymous
But. They. Can’t. Use their medical Skills to help women in states with draconian abortion laws. So many ob/gyms are leaving those states Because they can’t do no harm. You have a very naive way of looking at the world and seem unable to handle nuance. If god gives hardships to those who can handle it, well you haven’t seen much when it comes to issues of pregnancy. Consider yourself lucky and leave others who have had to handle much much more alone as they do the best they can under their struggles. |
Anonymous
No, the ACA helps with health insurance. You need actually medical professionals and facilities to provide healthcare. The GOP is making it increasingly difficult to obtain reliable birth control, including the healthcare (Planned Parenthood) required to access it. |
Anonymous
You know it's their top priority. They think the Handmaids tale is a blueprint. |
Anonymous
DP. And I'm going to keep bringing this up, because context is important -- you don't have to have medical professionals doing anything wrong to be able to stop them from providing health care. You just need to "investigate a complaint." Privileges are (rightly) suspended and license put on hold while claims of misconduct are investigated. That means OBs are unable to provide care or attend deliveries for weeks, often months. Their colleagues start doing doubletime to cover the gaps, when they already barely see their families or have time to rest. Some of them have children with special needs, or other obligations. More people leave. The workload trebles. More investigations. OB/Gyn medical-surgical residencies don't get good candidates, or fewer candidates, or even shut down, and now there are no residents to help with call hours and hospital time. More people leave. All of this is the snowball *even when* nobody has actually "done anything wrong." Even if everyone is cleared of all wrongdoing. |
Anonymous
The question is not when human (or any other life resulting from sexual reproduction) begins. It is when the state has an interest in that particular life that supersedes all else, which is related to the moral status attributed to the fertilized egg, its implantation, or subsequent stage of development. If the moral status of the fertilized egg is the same as that of a living person once birth has taken place, then society and the state have the same interest in that egg it does in a living person. Keep in mind that the time at which the existence of a pregnancy can be known has extended earlier and earlier as science has advanced--hence the older common law (enacted as statute in the US as early as 1821) that permitted abortion (i.e. methods to induce uterine bleeding) before quickening. Many years ago I was at a craft/farmer's fair in North Dakota with my mother, who bought a copy of the memoir of a woman who had been born on a 19th century homestead and was still living at the time (I think about 1980). She made repeated references to the pot of tansy tea that was often on the back of the woodstove as she grew up. Guess what that was used for (although she did not state in so many words, she alluded to the purpose). I knew a woman in college in the 1970s who used pennyroyal as a method of birth control. Currently, the state (ie government, in any state or territory of the United States) intervenes in pregnancy in, most often, two situations: by means of whatever laws are in force in a state when a woman presents to medical professionals and is found to be pregnant. Regardless off the stage or medical status of the pregnancy, medical decisions are bound at least in part by the laws governing medical practice with regard to pregnancy. In many states, if she is miscarrying and miscarriage cannot be further prevented but a heartbeat can be detected, no steps can be taken. She will typically not require medical treatment and will be sent home. Or, if she is found to be pregnant AND also has illegal drugs in her system, particularly opiates, it is possible she can be involuntarily committed for drug treatment under the law. She won't be sent to prison, but she will be in legally the custody of the state in a secure facility of its choosing. Back in the 1990s, also in North Dakota, there was a woman-pregnant-who was repeatedly arrested for sniffing aerosol paint. She was committed to the state hospital. She wanted an abortion. INitially the state refused to allow for arrangements to be made for her to have an abortion (this was before medication abortions) at the only abortion clinic in the state. Pro-life groups organized demanding to be allowed to intervene in the ensuing legal action brought on her behalf, offering her $10,000 to let them have her baby. Eventually she was permitted to undergo the abortion she wanted by way of a court order. Otherwise she would indeed have been forced to continue the pregnancy until birth (or fetal demise, if that were to happen). Now, she would indeed be forced to continue the pregnancy and give birth. So, let's suppose a woman is brought to the ER and is legally committed for mental health or substance abuse treatment because of her presenting conditions. Suppose further that medical technology has reached the point where the presence of a fertilized egg-even before implantation--can be detected, and moreover suppose that the current law requires any woman (or, these days, person with a uterus) be screened for the presence of a fertilized egg, and that now, instead of a "detectable heartbeat" being the legal criteria for outlawing abortion, now it is the presence of said fertilized egg. Let's suppose that in any medical encounter, screening for the existence of a possible fertilized egg, or any other state of conception and pregnancy, is now required. If the screening is non-invasive it can certainly be done without a court order in place (warrants are required for BAC blood draws is consent is withheld, not for breathalyzers). Let's suppose that, after the model of Texas, the particular state now has a statute allowing ANYBODY to bring an action in court to determine the pregnancy status of a particular person with a uterus. Let's suppose that laws now define a fertilized egg not just as a human life, but a life entitled to the full force of the state for its protection with an exception to be made ONLY if the person carrying that egg or pregnancy is at the risk of imminent death or medical event resulting in permanent disability. If you want to define a fertilized egg as a human life with the equal moral status of a living person who has been born, then you must accept the establishment of a state in which that egg, or any other status of pregnancy, is given the full protection of any other person. So, let's look at the status of a child. If the state determines that a child is at sufficient risk remaining in the care of a parent, the state takes custody of that child. The child doesn't even have to actually suffer injury, only to be at sufficient risk. So we must give the state the same degree of power over that fertilized egg or developing pregnancy. Which means that if the state determines that egg, blastocyst, embryo, or fetus to be at sufficient risk while remaining inside the uterus, the state gets to take legal custody of that entity to prevent the foreseeable harm. This is the end result of a rigid definition of individual human, legally protected life beginning with fertilization. |
Anonymous
| Darn. Without abortions, my kid will never get into a decent law school. |
Anonymous
And birth control often fails. That does not mean that pregnancy is one of the most dangerous processes a girl or woman can go through. Just because it is natural doesn’t mean it can’t kill or maim a person. And it is literally work. That’s why it has to be freely accepted by the person who agrees to go through it. |
Anonymous
Way to minimize the lives and choices of very real people to something simple, when it is so often so much more. Sound bites are for losers. "Without this abortion of a baby that would not survive anyway, my other children risk not having a mother anymore." "Without this abortion, I cannot get away from my abuser." "Without this abortion, I'll be trying to dry up my milk while finishing fourth grade." |