Obama's Abortion Stance

[Nancy]

Thank god someone is pulling the abortion issue back onto center stage. 35 years of time wasted battling out this issue just hasn't been enough.

[foofighter15]

Ummm, for the record his stance doesn't matter. Abortion laws are not Federal.

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

I don't know if that's really "garbage", but anyway...

If a woman is pregnant and doesn't want to be, what are you gonna do? Lock her up and chain her down? What do you do with the baby you have at the end? Give it to someone else?

I'm not asking that question from a pro/anti standpoint. It is a real question. What do you do if it is outlawed?

If you outlaw partial birth abortion?

Are you telling me she needs 9 monts to decide?

I meant it as garbage in defending late term and partial birth abortions, not the entire argument. Sorry about that.

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by foofighter15

Ummm, for the record his stance doesn't matter. Abortion laws are not Federal.

Not really.

State laws expand on the Federal 'law' which is the result of Roe V. Wade, which basically says abortion is legal in the United States but subject to the restriction of state laws. A state can NOT outlaw abortion which basically means your statement is false.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by Azure

If she doesn't want to be pregnant, maybe she should go through the proper procedures to not 'get' pregnant.

Yeah, that's really helpful. And if you didn't want the horse to run away, you shoulda shut the barn door.

[Weiser Wonder]

Hopefully Obama will be elected and continue with this stance.

[Displaced Flames fan]

Interesting that people are applauding the stance yet no one is willing to stick their neck out and explain why partial birth abortion needs to be legal.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

If you outlaw partial birth abortion?

Are you telling me she needs 9 monts to decide?

I meant it as garbage in defending late term and partial birth abortions, not the entire argument. Sorry about that.

To tell you the truth, I don't really know what partial birth abortion is, and I'm not interested in finding out. I suppose I can deduce all I need to know simply from the name of the procedure.

I guess my point is that abortion can't be outlawed in reality. You can write it down in the books, but in a free society, what can you do? You can't force someone to stay pregnant. I know I'm not qualified to wag my finger at someone and say "you are having that baby no matter what". I don't think anyone is. And if someone tries, what are they going to do to the person who doesn't listen?

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

To tell you the truth, I don't really know what partial birth abortion is, and I'm not interested in finding out. I suppose I can deduce all I need to know simply from the name of the procedure.

I guess my point is that abortion can't be outlawed in reality. You can write it down in the books, but in a free society, what can you do? You can't force someone to stay pregnant. I know I'm not qualified to wag my finger at someone and say "you are having that baby no matter what". I don't think anyone is. And if someone tries, what are they going to do to the person who doesn't listen?

I agree with you 100% and said so in the post you initially replied to. What I'm waiting for is someone to explain why a stance on partial birth abortion is so important. Why is it necessary that it is legal? I'm guessing nobody can give me a good reason. The reason is because abortion is the last word in the title. Not good enough IMO.

[simonsays]

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Azure

If she doesn't want to be pregnant, maybe she should go through the proper procedures to not 'get' pregnant.

I don't know anyone who is pro-choice because they think legal abortions mean they can be reckless and irresponsible by not using birth control. Rather, abortion is seen as a last resort if other contraceptive techniques fail.

My wife uses oral contraceptives. By any definition, we are following the "proper procedures to not 'get' pregnant." However, everyone knows that the pill does not have a 100% success rate, so what happens if we're the unlucky 0.1% for whom it fails? We don't want to have children, and my wife certainly doesn't want to carry a fetus for nine months (with all the hardships and potential risks to her health that brings), so she would get an abortion. That's not lazy birth control because we failed to plan ahead, that's a last resort after taking proper precautions and having them fail.

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I don't know anyone who is pro-choice because they think legal abortions mean they can be reckless and irresponsible by not using birth control. Rather, abortion is seen as a last resort if other contraceptive techniques fail.

My wife uses oral contraceptives. By any definition, we are following the "proper procedures to not 'get' pregnant." However, everyone knows that the pill does not have a 100% success rate, so what happens if we're the unlucky 0.1% for whom it fails? We don't want to have children, and my wife certainly doesn't want to carry a fetus for nine months (with all the hardships and potential risks to her health that brings), so she would get an abortion. That's not lazy birth control because we failed to plan ahead, that's a last resort after taking proper precautions and having them fail.

There's always tubal ligation and/or vasectomy. I don't want to wash out on the wrong side of this issue, but if you folks have made the decision and it's final I have to wonder why you wouldn't pursue those options.

Again, don't take that as a pro-lifer argument. That's not where I'm coming from...in fact, my first post in this thread was agreeing with you.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I don't know anyone who is pro-choice because they think legal abortions mean they can be reckless and irresponsible by not using birth control. Rather, abortion is seen as a last resort if other contraceptive techniques fail.

My wife uses oral contraceptives. By any definition, we are following the "proper procedures to not 'get' pregnant." However, everyone knows that the pill does not have a 100% success rate, so what happens if we're the unlucky 0.1% for whom it fails? We don't want to have children, and my wife certainly doesn't want to carry a fetus for nine months (with all the hardships and potential risks to her health that brings), so she would get an abortion. That's not lazy birth control because we failed to plan ahead, that's a last resort after taking proper precautions and having them fail.

I would think that you and your wife are smart enough to get it down ASAP. Not 4.5 months and after the conception date.

But even then, how many people get an abortion because they're the .01% of the population that doesn't have success with birth control? Exactly 0.1%. So obviously, more people are getting it done because they were reckless and didn't use protection 'properly.'

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

Not really.

State laws expand on the Federal 'law' which is the result of Roe V. Wade, which basically says abortion is legal in the United States but subject to the restriction of state laws. A state can NOT outlaw abortion which basically means your statement is false.

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.

So I think the premise--that women should not be allowed to abort fetuses late in their pregnancies willy-nilly--is one we can agree on. I'm not convinced that women are doing that, but for argument's sake let's say that such a law is needed. The trouble is that laws written to ban those abortions have three problems:
1. They're worded vaguely enough that they could be construed as banning all abortions. Indeed, this may be the long-term strategy of their proponents.
2. They contain no exception for the health of the mother.
3. Even if you solve 1. by creating more specific wording, they encounter a practical problem--you're banning a procedure, not a time at which a pregnancy is terminated. This may sound like a fine distinction, but it's not. Let me put it this way--to support a ban on "partial birth abortions" only, you are saying that it's okay to dismember a baby inside the uterus, but to pull it out intact is a crime. If you believe that a human life is at stake (and at 24 weeks I kind of do believe that) then either procedure is dreadful and reprehensible.

EDIT to add link for statistics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial-birth_abortion

[Displaced Flames fan]

Good post IFF.

My issue with abortion starts when the fetus is viable outside the womb. I guess that changes over time with improvements in neonatal health care. Maybe too vague, I don't know.

I still find it difficult to believe that there are medical issues that necessitate 'intatct dilation and extraction' which, frankly, makes it sound worse than partial birth abortion does. Preventing sepsis from a deceased fetus is not abortion IMO. If it is legally, it shouldn't be.

I definitely agree that the issue has a lot more to do with time than method.

I don't think all third trimester abortions are performed due to the health of the mother. I wonder what the percentages are. I'm guessing 90/10. No basis for that, just my perception.

[JiriHrdina]

Originally Posted by simonsays

Boy - that made me laugh! Thanks

[flylock shox]

^^ That's a beauty IFF. Nicely done.

[HOZ]

Well I would like to ask 2 questions:

1. IFF figures that 1% of all abortions are partial birth abortions. Doesn't sound like much...but what is the actual number? If say there was 200,000 abortions in the USA 1% would be 2000. That to me is a lot of head hacking and dismemberment without anaesthetic.


2. How many abortions are truly for the mother's health?

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Well I would like to ask 2 questions:

1. IFF figures that 1% of all abortions are partial birth abortions. Doesn't sound like much...but what is the actual number? If say there was 200,000 abortions in the USA 1% would be 2000. That to me is a lot of head hacking and dismemberment without anaesthetic.


2. How many abortions are truly for the mother's health?

Sorry, I may not have been clear: slightly less than 1% of abortions are performed after the 20th week. So-called "partial birth abortions" (not a real medical term, btw) are just one technique among many possible ones, and accounts for .017% of abortions in the U.S.

As I said, saying that dismembering a fetus inside the womb is okay but delivering it intact is not is moral relativism in my view. Either both are okay or neither is. (my own view, fwiw, is that late term abortions should not be available as an elective procedure, but should be reserved for use in situations where the mother's health is in danger--but that's just my opinion and I can see the rationale behind other views as well)

As for #2, I wasn't able to find that out--though I didn't spend a lot of time on it. From what I could tell there's some controversy about it, and my guess is that patient confidentiality hampers the accuracy of reporting somewhat. But these intact dilation and extraction procedures are performed between 20 and 24 weeks of pregnancy, not as some more inflammatory statements would have it, mere weeks before a healthy delivery is possible. For those who don't know, the youngest fetus ever to survive a live birth was 22 weeks gestation, and he/she was born approximately the size of a ball point pen. At 24 weeks, there's a 50% survivability rate for preterm labour and after that the fetus becomes gradually more viable, though still at extreme risk. I wasn't able to find any evidence of abortions being performed after 24 weeks gestation, and many hospitals have a 20 week cutoff.

But I kind of presume that even if let's say two thirds of intact D and E procedures are done to protect the health of the mother (and there are many reasons for this--most of them are rare, but so are these procedures) that makes the remainder a very tiny exception. But in the end it doesn't make all that much difference because I think it would be a simple matter to ban all non-medically necessary late term abortions. Everyone except the most strident ideologues would agree to it in my view, so long as it was appropriately constructed to preserve the right to terminate a pregnancy prior to a certain gestational age, and contained appropriate safeguards for the health of the mother. So why not write those into these pieces of legislation?

[pepper24]

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.

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.