Quote:
Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
To be clear, Roe v. Wade only protects 1st and 2nd trimester abortions. The whole "late term abortion" argument is actually over abortions that are dictated by the health of the mother, which is a far thornier issue than you'd think. People like Rich Santorum know full well that if you would include a notwithstanding clause allowing a doctor to decide to terminate a pregnancy because the mother's health is at risk, those bills would pass in a heart beat.
The notion of droves of young women engaging in partial birth abortion is just a myth perpetrated by people who want you to think this is a simpler issue than it is. I'm hesitant to even participate in this thread, since the premise and the original article are very silly. But the debate itself is serious and worthwhile--and won't be solved by picketing women's health centers, or indeed by pretending that the question of when a human life begins is totally moot or that abortion is morally okay under any circumstances.
But I think 99% of people would agree that elective third-trimester abortions should not be allowed. Which is why 99% of abortions take place in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. You read that right: the debate over "late term" abortions or the so-called "partial birth abortions" (the latter is one kind of late-term abortion procedure: its real name is "intact dilation and extraction") is a debate that hinges on less than 1% of abortions performed nationwide. To be specific, the second procedure, which is the most controversial, accounts for 0.17% of abortions. Of that 0.17%, one assumes that some number are of the medically necessary variety--since there are actually a great number of things that can happen between 20 and 24 weeks (which is the time period we're talking about here) that are life threatening to the mother, including fetal death, which can cause sepsis.
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Well said, IFF. Bi-partisan politics is dragging and simple issue.
On a side-note, I am confused if this thread started as an Anti-Obama or Anti-abortion thread.