Late term abortion, again (2nd try)
(I'm trying this thread again, because the previous one seems to have been dilated and extracted.)
The Senate has done it again - they've overwhelmingly passed a ban on "partial birth abortion." Congress passed this a few times in the 90s but Clinton vetoed it, saying he wanted some exceptions in case the health of the mother was at serious risk. Now for the first time in 10 years the stars have aligned and Republicans control both houses of Congress and the presidency, and it will certainly pass and be signed.
The current bill is very similar to a state late-term abortion ban that the Supreme Court struck down a couple of years ago. Republicans explicitly voted down a call to rewrite the bill to be constitutional
. The key issue is that the exception for the health of the mother be included, rather than just the life of the mother, as in the current bill.
<a href="http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/072/nation/Senate_clears_way_to_approve_ban_on_partial_birth_ abortions+.shtml" target="_blank">AP article about the passage of the bill in the Senate.</a>
<a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=99-830"; target="_blank">Link to Supreme Court decision overturning late-term abortion ban</a>
<a href="http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:1:./temp/~c10853upou::"; target="_blank">Link to the bill itself.</a>
The Senate has done it again - they've overwhelmingly passed a ban on "partial birth abortion." Congress passed this a few times in the 90s but Clinton vetoed it, saying he wanted some exceptions in case the health of the mother was at serious risk. Now for the first time in 10 years the stars have aligned and Republicans control both houses of Congress and the presidency, and it will certainly pass and be signed.
The current bill is very similar to a state late-term abortion ban that the Supreme Court struck down a couple of years ago. Republicans explicitly voted down a call to rewrite the bill to be constitutional
. The key issue is that the exception for the health of the mother be included, rather than just the life of the mother, as in the current bill.<a href="http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/072/nation/Senate_clears_way_to_approve_ban_on_partial_birth_ abortions+.shtml" target="_blank">AP article about the passage of the bill in the Senate.</a>
<a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=99-830"; target="_blank">Link to Supreme Court decision overturning late-term abortion ban</a>
<a href="http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:1:./temp/~c10853upou::"; target="_blank">Link to the bill itself.</a>
Comments
I'll be brief. I supported Clinton and I don't support what is being passed now...
...all I got. Next...
[quote]That means that for all the sound and fury, the law could have no practical impact. Even some on the right wonder why abortion opponents have spent so much energy on it. Mark Crutcher, of the anti-abortion group Life Dynamics, says the partial-birth fight has allowed politicians to take a public stand without any real consequences. ?Bush gets to play pro-life without having to do anything pro-life,? he says. Still, the effect on public opinion has already been profound: polls show broad support not only for the partial-birth ban, but for more restrictions on abortion after the first trimester. Even if abortion foes lose in the courts, gaining points with the public could be the biggest win of all. <hr></blockquote>
Since Republican lawmakers explicity voted down an amendment making the bill constitutionally safe, they all know that it won't survive a constitutional challenge. That much only makes sense. So, what did they do it for then? The bill makes sense to me as an effective political strategy. As a liberal Democrat, I must concede it as a win for Republicans.
<img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
[ 03-13-2003: Message edited by: ShawnPatrickJoyce ]</p>
Fellowship
You're thinking of the case of a normal, healthy pregnancy. Consider a situation in which the baby has hydrocephalus. It's a condition in which the baby's head is enlarged with fluid, and it's not that uncommon. But sometimes the head is extremely enlarged to about 3 times the size of an adult head. In that case, the child could never gain consciousness and will never live.
The fetus is alive, but obviously giving birth in the normal fashion would not be possible. So what do you do? One option is to perform a Cesarean, and then allow the child to die on its own after birth. But the C-section is a major surgery and may not be possible in some cases, and may risk serious health consequences for the pregnant woman, such as not being able to ever have children again. Maybe the physician is out in the boonies and doesn't have the proper facilities to perform surgery like that. Who knows what might be necessary in some rare situation?
So they get the baby in breach, deliver it as much as physically possible, and then drain the enlarged head (sometimes as much as two gallons of fluid) to complete the delivery.
What you're saying is that you think it's OK to risk disabling a woman (e.g., so that she can't have any more children) in order to give birth to a baby that will die within hours anyway. Why?
What you're saying is that it's OK to have a pba if the baby wouldn't live very long anyway. So, how long? days? weeks? what if the condition usually resulted in a child living to 5 or 10 yrs. old?
<strong>murder is always wrong. even if the baby is not going to live a long, or "full" life, it is wrong to kill him or her. no one has the right to decide if someone else's life is insignificant enough to be ended.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Murder is only wrong when it isn't fun.
It's fun to murder babies.
Murdering babies isn't wrong.
<strong>C-section is a fairly common surgery and it does not often result in the woman not being able to have children again.
What you're saying is that it's OK to have a pba if the baby wouldn't live very long anyway. So, how long? days? weeks? what if the condition usually resulted in a child living to 5 or 10 yrs. old?</strong><hr></blockquote>No, a c-section does not "often" result in disability. But there are situations where that can be the case - the uterus is cut open, which in some cases can prevent future pregnancy. Again, those opposed to the use of this procedure think of the typical cases, but I'm thinking of the exceptions. Under ideal conditions (appropriate pre-natal care so that conditions like hydrocephalus could be detected early, appropriate facilities and capable physicians, etc.), this D & X procedure would never need to be used. But conditions are not always ideal. Let's not have politicians make medical decisions for physicians.
BTW, the death of the mother is 4 times more likely in a cesarean, and the risk of other complications is higher than a regular birth. <a href="http://www.the-health-pages.com/women/pregnancy/cesarean.html#cblink9"; target="_blank">From this link.</a>
About how long the baby will live - in the case of this extreme hydrocephalus, the baby doesn't have a functioning brain, and never will. They could probably actually keep the baby alive indefinitely on machines if they wanted to. So "how long" is not the issue. To me, the issue is whether a) you're actually giving birth to a baby rather than having the baby removed to save your life, and b) whether you can reduce risk to the mom by performing one procedure over another. Just to be clear, this bill would outlaw this procedure even if it could prevent the permanent disability or severe health risk to the mother.
<strong>murder is always wrong. even if the baby is not going to live a long, or "full" life, it is wrong to kill him or her. no one has the right to decide if someone else's life is insignificant enough to be ended.</strong><hr></blockquote>Murder is always wrong, but killing is not always wrong. Wars against terrorists and self-defense are two obvious examples that come to mind. A few years ago, my family and I took my mother off the machines, and she died that day. She had been sick for a while, and had a very explicit living will.
This abortion example is even more clear than that, because someone else's health is threatened.
Those opposed to late-term abortions graphically depict the procedure with language like this - "the feet are delivered but the head is kept inside, and then a knife is jabbed into the skull and the brain sucked out with a vacuum and then the head is delivered." Stop to think about why that is done. There are other abortion techniques, so why use this procedure? Just to be evil? No, it's because the head can't be delivered due to the cerebrospinal fluid, and so it needs to be drained, or it will kill the mother.
<strong>Murder is always wrong, but killing is not always wrong. Wars against terrorists and self-defense are two obvious examples that come to mind. A few years ago, my family and I took my mother off the machines, and she died that day. She had been sick for a while, and had a very explicit living will.
This abortion example is even more clear than that, because someone else's health is threatened.
Those opposed to late-term abortions graphically depict the procedure with language like this - "the feet are delivered but the head is kept inside, and then a knife is jabbed into the skull and the brain sucked out with a vacuum and then the head is delivered." Stop to think about why that is done. There are other abortion techniques, so why use this procedure? Just to be evil? No, it's because the head can't be delivered due to the cerebrospinal fluid, and so it needs to be drained, or it will kill the mother.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Let me elaborate. I agree with you in principle, but I digress on the topic of "murder" and "killing." Murder is only a legal term to define illegal killing. Murder is only what we as a society define as illegal killing. So, if abortion were to be outright banned, it would be murder to end a pregnancy by abortion. Then, not all murder would be necessarily wrong. Murder as we define it today and what it encompasses today is wrong, but in the future, I can't see all murder remaining wrong.
It's also a word not used literally. For instance, when you see the occasional "Abortion is Murder" billboard advertisement or graffiti scrawl on a concrete bridge, it's purposefully used as a loaded term to elicit images of grisly murders we always see on TV. Logically, we're supposed to equate the death of a fetus with the death of a person because of the word "murder's" use. So as a figurative term, I can't tell you how often it is wrong.
<strong>murder is always wrong. even if the baby is not going to live a long, or "full" life, it is wrong to kill him or her. no one has the right to decide if someone else's life is insignificant enough to be ended.</strong><hr></blockquote>
When parents have a child, they want to see him living and becoming an adult in the future. No parents will want of a child who is doomed to die early, no parents want to see his child suffering from pain (because when you are a severe disease that leads to an early die, you suffer pain also). It's a nightmare.
If such things occur for me and my whife the answer, will be clear, we will prefer to stop his life early. Call this murder if you want, but it's my advice no one will oblige me or my wife to support such a terrible thing that a children doomed to die early.
[ 03-15-2003: Message edited by: Powerdoc ]</p>
<strong>As I posed before (in v1 of the thread)...it is an inhumane procedure. It should be outlawed....looks like it will be.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It's inhumane to save the mother's life as BRussell described? Feh.
<strong>
It's inhumane to save the mother's life as BRussell described? Feh.</strong><hr></blockquote>
First of all, the AMA's Council on Legislation unanimously said this procedure is never medically indicated. Secondly, the bill contains an exception for the life of the mother. Finally, Partial Birth Abortion itself poses health risks to the mother.
<strong>No, a c-section does not "often" result in disability. But there are situations where that can be the case - the uterus is cut open, which in some cases can prevent future pregnancy. Again, those opposed to the use of this procedure think of the typical cases, but I'm thinking of the exceptions. Under ideal conditions (appropriate pre-natal care so that conditions like hydrocephalus could be detected early, appropriate facilities and capable physicians, etc.), this D & X procedure would never need to be used. But conditions are not always ideal. Let's not have politicians make medical decisions for physicians.
BTW, the death of the mother is 4 times more likely in a cesarean, and the risk of other complications is higher than a regular birth. <a href="http://www.the-health-pages.com/women/pregnancy/cesarean.html#cblink9"; target="_blank">From this link.</a>
About how long the baby will live - in the case of this extreme hydrocephalus, the baby doesn't have a functioning brain, and never will. They could probably actually keep the baby alive indefinitely on machines if they wanted to. So "how long" is not the issue. To me, the issue is whether a) you're actually giving birth to a baby rather than having the baby removed to save your life, and b) whether you can reduce risk to the mom by performing one procedure over another. Just to be clear, this bill would outlaw this procedure even if it could prevent the permanent disability or severe health risk to the mother.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Your link is quoting statistics on natural vs. c-section from 1978. Couldn't you find something a little more current?
Nick
1. Independent DNA.
2. Independent Blood Supply.
(no, it does not mix with the mother's)
3. Independent development.
(it always controls its own development)
I've always been at a loss as to why the unborn doesn't have the same rights as the born (and will somebody show me a newborn five seconds out of the birth canal that is viable on its own?)
...consider a five-second old child----still feeding on the placenta, heart still in two-chamber mode----the only real difference is the amount of the mother's flesh surrounding the child. Why not stick a .22 in the kid's ear and save the insurance company the bill?
This is a foolish discussion, PBA is abject sadism and shouldn't be part of civilized disscussion.
My iBook has died. It is not even a year old I believe and it acts as if there is a fracture in the Motherboard so when you move it just a slightlittle bit it goes crazy. The screen jumbles up and the System freezes.
How should I deal with apple? What is the warrenty for the iBook? I know I did not buy applecare and now I wonder where I stand.
Thanks Fellowship with no iBook
<strong>If any of you see this please PM me with your thoughts...
My iBook has died. It is not even a year old I believe and it acts as if there is a fracture in the Motherboard so when you move it just a slightlittle bit it goes crazy. The screen jumbles up and the System freezes.
How should I deal with apple? What is the warrenty for the iBook? I know I did not buy applecare and now I wonder where I stand.
Thanks Fellowship with no iBook
Pray harder. (insert rolleyes here).
<strong>
Pray harder. (insert rolleyes here).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thanks BR I knew I could count on a wise statement from you.
I have no doubt I will get the iBook issue resolved.
Fellowship