Face the Fetus: It's time for abortion rights advocates to stop denying reality.

[Tony]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2097927/

How long can supporters of abortion rights go on denying the distinct legal significance of unborn human life? Not any longer, if they want to save Roe v. Wade.

That's the message the U.S. Senate delivered Thursday as it passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. Under UVVA, which had already passed the House, anyone who injures or "causes the death" of a "child in utero" during a violent federal crime will get the same punishment "provided under Federal law for that conduct had that injury or death occurred to the unborn child's mother." The bill defines a "child in utero" as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." President Bush will soon sign it into law.



Have pro-choicers shot themselves in the foot?

[Mr Manifesto]

I'm moving to the US to start a backyard abortion clinic. Should make a mint!

[TillEulenspiegel]

Cool idea Mr.M...........
You could drop off your laundry and get both your clothes cleaned and obtain your surgical equipment at the same time!

[toddjh]

Originally posted by Tony
http://slate.msn.com/id/2097927/

Have pro-choicers shot themselves in the foot?

More religion in government. Yay. Makes me glad I've been snipped already.

Jeremy

[c0rbin]

Have pro-choicers shot themselves in the foot?

Only if the courts describe a clinical procedure as being "violent federal crime."

Till then, try oral. Good stuff, that.

[toddjh]

Originally posted by c0rbin
Only if the courts describe a clinical procedure as being "violent federal crime."

You have to admit, though, that it's a foot in the door. What justification is there for a law like this, unless it's to promote the dogma that "life begins at conception?"

Jeremy

[roger]

Originally posted by toddjh
What justification is there for a law like this, unless it's to promote the dogma that "life begins at conception?"

May we change the situation just slightly and see if it smells the same?

Say someone needs a kidney, or heck, a blood transfusion, and I refuse for whatever reason. That person dies. I am not held responsible because you can't force somebody to give up their own body, take medical risks, etc, for another person. My rights to my body exceeds another person's right to my body. However, if I pull out a gun and shoot the person, I'm liable for murder.

The fetus is dependent on the mother's body. She can choose to remove that dependency, as her right to her body exceeds another. That's rather different from somebody else killing the fetus.

Note that this argument does not depend on what was killed was 'human' yet, 'viable', or any of that other stuff.

I have no idea if this was the thinking of the sponser of the bill, but it's how I think about it, anyway.

[TillEulenspiegel]

Originally posted by c0rbin


Only if the courts describe a clinical procedure as being "violent federal crime."

Till then, try oral. Good stuff, that.

Um Guy............You realize that "Oral" is against the law in most states? It's called Sodomy.

[toddjh]

Originally posted by roger
May we change the situation just slightly and see if it smells the same?

Say someone needs a kidney, or heck, a blood transfusion, and I refuse for whatever reason. That person dies. I am not held responsible because you can't force somebody to give up their own body, take medical risks, etc, for another person. My rights to my body exceeds another person's right to my body. However, if I pull out a gun and shoot the person, I'm liable for murder.

The fetus is dependent on the mother's body. She can choose to remove that dependency, as her right to her body exceeds another. That's rather different from somebody else killing the fetus.

This is a traditional pro-choice argument, but I've never bought it -- it's too idealized. Add a couple stipulations:

1. The person needs the kidney because they were forced to participate in some activity you undertook that had a known risk. To use a fairly reasonable example, suppose they need a lung transplant because they were a captive audience to your second-hand smoke.

It's not like the fact that sex can lead to pregnancy is a mystery. In fact, the failure rates of various birth control methods are readily available, and for most of them the mean time between failures is less than 20 years, meaning that most people should expect an unexpected pregnancy (so to speak) at some point in their life. When it happens, you can't reasonably claim that you didn't foresee that possible consequence.

2. You had three or four months during which you could've solved this person's need for a transplant with a simple phone call to a doctor, who would've come to take care of it. You didn't, and instead deliberately allowed to situation to reach the point where a transplant was the only option.

I have no problems with abortions in the first trimester -- there's no way anyone could reasonably believe that wad of tissue should have human rights. However, if a woman chooses to wait five or six months, then she is implicitly accepting responsibility by refusing to take care of the problem in a timely manner. By waiting for the fetus to develop to a more human-like state, and only then ending its life, the woman is deliberately creating a situation in which a human being dies unnecessarily. As they say in Law and Order, it seems like depraved indifference to me.

All that aside, I think your point about how the mother can "choose to remove the fetus' dependence" is flawed. As far as I know, late-term abortions (which are the only kind I have a problem with) aren't passive - they directly cause bodily harm to the fetus, causing its death. So I don't think it's anything as simple as ending a symbiotic relationship.

Jeremy

[roger]

Well, my wording was passive, but I didn't intend to imply that the act was passive. I'm really not interested in debating abortion, but just wanted to point out that there is a difference between aborting a fetus and a third person performing a violent act against the will of the mother, killing a desired fetus. Very, very different things.

[Bjorn]

it will enshrine in federal law the principle that killing a fetus is legally equivalent to killing a child. That's exactly the principle the Supreme Court rejected in Roe. ... but the law specifically makes an exception for abortions?

[Zep]

Making abortions illegal in the USA won't make abortions lessen or stop. There will be just as many performed regardless of these or any laws.

All these sorts of laws really achieve is to prevent well-trained medicos from performing procedures legally under hospital conditions, while forcing abortion to become an illicit and dangerous underground trade and making it very expensive as a result.

I also predict that the number of women crossing the borders to Mexico and Canada for short duration stays (I'm assuming these countries do have legal abortion) will simply increase.

This is all to be applauded as a "good result for US society", of course. :rolleyes:

[Grammatron]

Originally posted by Zep
Making abortions illegal in the USA won't make abortions lessen or stop. There will be just as many performed regardless of these or any laws.

All these sorts of laws really achieve is to prevent well-trained medicos from performing procedures legally under hospital conditions, while forcing abortion to become an illicit and dangerous underground trade and making it very expensive as a result.

I also predict that the number of women crossing the borders to Mexico and Canada for short duration stays (I'm assuming these countries do have legal abortion) will simply increase.

This is all to be applauded as a "good result for US society", of course. :rolleyes:

Usually when something is made illegal the use for it drops and it goes into black market. The people who fear the law more would go for alternatives.

I'm surprised you would claim that making something illegal would have no affect.

[Jas]

Originally posted by TillEulenspiegel


Um Guy............You realize that "Oral" is against the law in most states? It's called Sodomy.

You just can't win in the US, can you?

[Grammatron]

Originally posted by Jas


You just can't win in the US, can you?

Didn't Supreme Court rule it was a-ok to do it?

[ssibal]

I am pro abortion but I have no problem with this law in theory. If a woman wants to keep the child/fetus/whatever, she has as much of right to do so as she does to kill it. As for the fears that this is a stepping stone to banning abortion, I think the partial birth abortion ban is much more problematic since it is actually banning a form of abortion.

[toddjh]

Originally posted by ssibal
I am pro abortion but I have no problem with this law in theory. If a woman wants to keep the child/fetus/whatever, she has as much of right to do so as she does to kill it.

I agree, but logic would suggest that a civil suit would be the remedy in that case. Treating the death of a fetus without human rights as a murder seems problematic to say the least.

Jeremy

[Bjorn]

Originally posted by Grammatron
Didn't Supreme Court rule it was a-ok to do it? For oral sex, I think you might be right, at least for some states.

In later years, several states formally expanded the definition of sodomy to include both oral and anal sex, whether homosexual or heterosexual. The Georgia law in the Bowers case, for example, defined the crime as "any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another." (This law was overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court in 1998.) Source (http://slate.msn.com/id/2075271/)

[Zep]

Originally posted by Grammatron
Usually when something is made illegal the use for it drops and it goes into black market. The people who fear the law more would go for alternatives.

I'm surprised you would claim that making something illegal would have no affect. Without any improvement in the sexual health education level of the community, which is what leads to the situation in the first place, the demand for abortion will remain unchanged. The choices then become: get it done legally, get it done illegally, force the woman to take the pregnancy to term. All that changing the laws will do will be to alter the proportions of numbers making these choices, not lessen the numbers overall.

The real problem is the level of sexual health education, something that most conservative governments in the world seem to have significant problems dealing with and will assiduously avoid.

[Grammatron]

Originally posted by Zep
Without any improvement in the sexual health education level of the community, which is what leads to the situation in the first place, the demand for abortion will remain unchanged. The choices then become: get it done legally, get it done illegally, force the woman to take the pregnancy to term. All that changing the laws will do will be to alter the proportions of numbers making these choices, not lessen the numbers overall.

The real problem is the level of sexual health education, something that most conservative governments in the world seem to have significant problems dealing with and will assiduously avoid.

I disagree, I think some women will be more careful not to get pregnant and some would be more likely to make sure they would never have kids again. It just defies logic that no matter what people would be doing the same thing and living the same way.

[Bjorn]

Originally posted by Zep
The real problem is the level of sexual health education, something that most conservative governments in the world seem to have significant problems dealing with and will assiduously avoid. You could be right:

Norway: 12,6 abortions per 1 000 women between 15-49 years
USA: 20 abortions per 1 000 women (no age group specified)

However, as mentioned before, the numbers in the US vary a lot depending on which statistics you read.

I got the Norwegian numbers from the Norwegian government's Statistical Bureau, and the US numbers from this anti-site here (http://www.mswm.org/abortions.worldwide.abortionstatistics.htm) which claim their numbers are from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

[Zep]

Originally posted by Grammatron

I disagree, I think some women will be more careful not to get pregnant and some would be more likely to make sure they would never have kids again. It just defies logic that no matter what people would be doing the same thing and living the same way. Yes, it defies logic and that's the whole problem. We are both well educated about sex and sexual health issues and would see such a course of action as clearly self-evident. There are indeed young women already well educated on the subject, but they are also the ones who are already being careful and so not need abortions so much!

The problem is that the people who get unwanted pregnancies the most (and the people who get them pregnant) are usually woefully ill-informed on the whole situation. From first hand I can say it is alarming just how ill-informed they are, how much utter nonsense on the subject they seem to have acquired and hold as gospel truth. Their rationalisations are truly cringeworthy.

You can't legislate against such ignorance - sex and life education is the solution.

[Ladewig]

I have no problems with abortions in the first trimester -- there's no way anyone could reasonably believe that wad of tissue should have human rights.

Perhaps you want to rephrase that to "there is no way anyone other than Congress could reasonably believe that a wad of tissue should have human rights."

The bill defines a "child in utero" as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

If a woman is three weeks pregnant and she miscarries after you punch her in the stomach while committing a federal violent crime, then you will soon be, in the eyes of the law, a murderer.

[Bjorn]

Originally posted by Ladewig
If a woman is three weeks pregnant and she miscarries after you punch her in the stomach while committing a federal violent crime, then you will soon be, in the eyes of the law, a murderer. And as far as I can see, maybe even if you didn't know she was pregnant.

[toddjh]

Originally posted by Ladewig
Perhaps you want to rephrase that to "there is no way anyone other than Congress could reasonably believe that a wad of tissue should have human rights."

You think Congress is being reasonable?

Jeremy

[Dorian Gray]

I am gathering that people in the middle generally agree that the first trimester is okay, and the third trimester is not okay, for abortions. It's that tricky second trimester that's the hard part.

I think that if you carry a child knowingly for more than 2-3 weeks, and you get an abortion, then you are a waste of human life. If you're going to get one, and I'm not saying it's a good thing, then it should be done as quickly as possible.

Just my opinion. My position on the matter is something like 'restricted pro choice' - with my choice being not to get an abortion, or, well, my wife not getting one.

[Some Friggin Guy]

Originally posted by Dorian Gray
I am gathering that people in the middle generally agree that the first trimester is okay, and the third trimester is not okay, for abortions. It's that tricky second trimester that's the hard part.

I think that if you carry a child knowingly for more than 2-3 weeks, and you get an abortion, then you are a waste of human life. If you're going to get one, and I'm not saying it's a good thing, then it should be done as quickly as possible.

Just my opinion. My position on the matter is something like 'restricted pro choice' - with my choice being not to get an abortion, or, well, my wife not getting one.

The major problem with this idea (not that I wholly disagree with you) is that, for many women, this is a hugely difficult moral dilemma. Something that may take more than 2-3 weeks to decide. I, personally, would have a hard time telling a woman who had been struggling for say, 4-6 weeks with the idea, but had finally come to the realization that she felt she had to abort, that she had waited too long and her window of opportunity was now closed.

That seems to be the point about abortion that a lot of people don't grasp (I think people on this board probably grasp it more readily than most). Most women who have abortions don't just do it without thinking. This is something that weighs very heavily on them while they try and figure out what to do and it does haunt them for a long time after.

[The Fool]

Originally posted by Bjorn
And as far as I can see, maybe even if you didn't know she was pregnant.
you can pass all the laws you like but that doesnt mean squat until they are tested in court. Jurisprudence would protect people from silly charges like murder where there is clearly no intent to kill anyone....

[The Fool]

Originally posted by Some Friggin Guy


The major problem with this idea (not that I wholly disagree with you) is that, for many women, this is a hugely difficult moral dilemma.
It is a hard decision best left to pregnant women and not dickheads like me.

[Dorian Gray]

I, personally, would have a hard time telling a woman who had been struggling for say, 4-6 weeks with the idea, but had finally come to the realization that she felt she had to abort, that she had waited too long and her window of opportunity was now closed. If it is a law beforehand, then telling a woman she has passed the deadline would be no different than telling a motorist that they have exceeded the speed limit. The woman would know in advance how long she had to decide.

It's another reason for sex education in the schools. Ideally, when a woman came to this bridge she would have already thought about it a great deal and discussed it with many people, and her decision to cross it or burn it would take 5 minutes.

[Some Friggin Guy]

Originally posted by Dorian Gray
If it is a law beforehand, then telling a woman she has passed the deadline would be no different than telling a motorist that they have exceeded the speed limit. The woman would know in advance how long she had to decide.

It's another reason for sex education in the schools. Ideally, when a woman came to this bridge she would have already thought about it a great deal and discussed it with many people, and her decision to cross it or burn it would take 5 minutes.

I agree that sex education in schools would be of tremendous help in this (and many other isssues).

And, I do not recommend breaking the law for anyone, though I am not adverse to doing so to make a statement about unjust laws.

I do, however, disagreee with the idea of laws limiting abortion. The fact is that no matter how much sex education, or education in general, a woman has, the decision to abort is rarely an easy one and should not be one made under duress.

[epepke]

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act may be troubling. If religiously motivated, however, it has to be related to Biblical passages that clearly make it a property crime.

I think that most reasonable people, whether pro-choice or otherwise, would consider it ideal to have as few abortions as possible. There are a lot of countries, such as the Netherlands, where abortions are both freely available and rare.

Frankly, I can't see that the large number of abortions in the US per capita is independent of a culture that promotes denial as to the effects of sex. I've even seen newspaper articles about Jerry Falwell in which he stated that birth control came after abortion on the list of bad things to get rid of.

Mostly, I think, it's cultural. I've had sex with fewer than 40 women, which is pretty pathetic, given some definition of pathetic. Nevertheless, a large number of them were totally freaked out by the fact that I had condoms and preparations containing Nonoxynol-9. I am hard pressed to justify this reaction, considering that some of them even carried their own condoms.

There seems to be a kind of schizoid reaction to sex in the US, which results both in the spread of STDs and unwanted pregnancies.

[MoeFaux]

Originally posted by Grammatron


Usually when something is made illegal the use for it drops and it goes into black market. The people who fear the law more would go for alternatives.

I'm surprised you would claim that making something illegal would have no affect.

Prohibition?

[Some Friggin Guy]

Originally posted by MoeFaux


Prohibition?

Brilliant point, Moe.

However, I now must blame you for the rather disturbing images in my head of people in the 20's going to illicet abortion clinics and treating them in the smae manner as speakeasies (having parties, playing music, etc.)


I know, I'm a sick, sick man.

[Drooper]

Originally posted by Tony
http://slate.msn.com/id/2097927/



Have pro-choicers shot themselves in the foot?


Hmm,

Does this mean an autopsy and coronial enquiry will be required into every miscarriage?

Might a mother be arrested on possible charges of manslaughter if evidence indicaes that she might have caused the miscarriage by, say, physically exerting herself?


This is a crappy law.

[Upchurch]

Originally posted by Tony

Have pro-choicers shot themselves in the foot? How? I don't get it.

Usually, "shooting yourself in the foot" means that you've done something that ends up hurting you. Unless I missed something (which is very possible), this seems to be the work of pro-lifers, is it not?

[Jocko]

Just as an aside, I was once in a band called "Face the Fetus." Blue Oyster Cult tribute band.

Carry on.

[Ladewig]

Jurisprudence would protect people from silly charges like murder where there is clearly no intent to kill anyone....

Many states charge perps with first degree murder when a death occurs, intentionally or unintenionally, during specific violent felonies, such as aggravated kidnapping. But here we have to deal with federal law, which does authorize the death penalty for crimes related to "Civil rights offenses resulting in death" (18 U.S.C. 241, 242, 245, 247). So jurisprudence may not protect people from murder charges in the example given.

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by MoeFaux:
Prohibition?

How many criminal empires were built on the back of backstreet abortion clinics?

[BillyTK]

Originally posted by Drooper



Hmm,

Does this mean an autopsy and coronial enquiry will be required into every miscarriage?

Might a mother be arrested on possible charges of manslaughter if evidence indicaes that she might have caused the miscarriage by, say, physically exerting herself?


This is a crappy law.
Oh pants. I'm disagreeing with you strongly in the "Lloyd's..." thread, but now I have to agree with you strongly here. A crappy law, indeed.

[c0rbin]

Um Guy............You realize that "Oral" is against the law in most states? It's called Sodomy.

So is speeding. Unfortunately, one can sometimes lead to the other :D

[Drooper]

Originally posted by BillyTK

Oh pants. I'm disagreeing with you strongly in the "Lloyd's..." thread, but now I have to agree with you strongly here.

Just goes to show that everybody is right sometimes.;)

[Segnosaur]

Originally posted by MoeFaux


Prohibition?

Even though prohibition a really dumb idea, and a large number (probably a majority) of people still continued to drink (either at speakeasies or though other means), it doesn't necessarily mean the consumption of alcohol went up during prohibition. I figure there are enough people who would follow the law either out of fear of getting caught, or lack of ability to find sources of alcohol. (After all, speakeasies couldn't necessarily advertise.)

If abortion were made illegal there would be a reduction in the total number of abortions performed. However, there'd also be a larger number of complications for those obtaining abortions illegally and that would be harder on the medical care system.