Loren Pechtel

But this does not make an argument against abortion. Should people be required to handle the consequences of driving--no medical treatment for motor-vehicle accidents?

Daleth

So you're not just saying that she should have to carry the child for 9 months, but that she should be required to raise it for 18 years? Why should she have to raise the child? Why not force that on the man and make her make payments? If she's got the child and he's making payments, is she not supporting the child financially as well? If she is, then again, how do we equalize the punishment the couple receives? She's got the pregnancy, which is painful and awful in countless ways and the lost sleep over the kid and dealing with the kids needs on a constant daily basis for 18 years and she's supporting this kid 50% financially... so again, even the score. Make the penalty for sex equal. We can do better than blind, deaf, dumb and mindless Mother Nature.

More importantly, your punishing the kid as well in this scenario, forcing it to be raised by someone who never wanted it to be born.

If she can give the child up for adoption, we're right back to, OK, what's the punishment for the man who committed the same act in causing the pregnancy?

They are. They are taking action to remedy the problem they caused. It's a medical procedure. When some jackass breaks a leg trying to show off skiing, we don't insist he live his life as a cripple. He takes responsibility by getting it fixed and paying for the medical treatment. We don't just allow nature to set the consequences, because we know how to do better.

Shadowy, this is the worst of all possible arguments against abortion. It assumes that women deserve more punishment for causing pregnancy than men, and so sex is wrong for women but fine (or just less wrong) for men. It assumes a child is a woman's cross to bear, which demeans fathers everywhere, demeans women by assuming their role in life, and demeans children by making them living punishments for their parents rather than people. This argument essentially espouses hatred of all people.

Ronin

I recently checked the CDC for topical statistics regarding abortions at particular gestational periods to see if your generalized assertions have support and this is what I found:



So, the number of reported legal abortions performed at greater than or equal to 21 weeks in 1999 (that was the most recent I could find)...was 9,643 (1.5% of the total number of abortions).

Personally, I really do find this number unreasonable based upon my own view of the importance of sentient life as it relates to the non-medical motivation for abortion.


Please note that I did not require a perfect protection...as a violent crimes detective, I fully realize that legal statute cannot provide such a high standard.

What number of these abortions would satisfy the 'running rampant' qualification in order to legislate?

I would say, one...given my own standard regarding sentient life.

That is the disquieting conundrum, Daleth, because I simply see it otherwise.

The statistics I located don't seem to support this view.

I have to make it clear that I am speaking of the practice of non-medical motivations for a late term abortion.

Then we may be talking about the necessity of a court psychological evaluation to determine if this is the situation or if even charges should be pursued...on a case by case basis...in order to find the best course of action.

Action, neverless, does seem warranted in my view, at this point in time.

HelenM

I expect she has reasons and they're probably a lot like the reasons why people have early abortions. It seems to me that you're assuming that the woman wanted the baby then changed her mind. Maybe not. Maybe circumstances/other people prevented her having an earlier abortion.

And why is a late abortion so much riskier than an early one? Medically speaking?

It seems odd to me that (if I'm right) this country has no nationally mandated term limits on abortions done on a physically healthy mother and unborn baby.

Helen

contracycle

And this is not necessarily a feature possessed only by people.

Shadowy Man

I'm not sure I see it in such extreme terms as you are stating here, but think of it this way:

If you believe that life begins at conception then basically what you are saying is this: two people have sex, knowing full well that there are risks involved and the act might result in the conception of a baby. They take this risk, for whatever reasons, and lo and behold they produce a baby. They then decide to murder the baby rather than deal with the consequences. How do you justify that? No matter how painful or burdensome the pregnancy might be isn't it better not to commit murder? Wouldn't it be better to go through that, after all, the parents knew it might be a possible consequence of their action, and either raise the baby themselves or give it up for adoption?

Your analogy to breaking a leg skiing is not quite fair, as in correcting the broken leg doesn't require murdering anybody.

As far as the inequity between the mother and the father, that's going to be there. I wish there were a way to equalize the situation, but I'm not sure how that's possible. Certainly a father can't prevent a woman from having an abortion because he wants to keep the baby.

ex-xian

Judith Jarvis Thomson presented this argument to answer that very question. It's called the argument from unplugging the violinist.

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you -- we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or still longer? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine that you would regard this as outrageous.

Daleth

Thanks for the numbers. It's too bad that they didn't have > 24 weeks, because that's the boundary we're talking about for viability, but close enough. This doesn't tell us, though, why the abortions happened. Why do you find the numbers unreasonable? Have you made a list of all of the possible birth defects incompatible with life and conditions that threaten the life of the mother that may be found late in pregnancy, determined the frequency at which each occurs, and then compared that to number of pregnancues occurring in 1999 and found that it's not possible that these are being done for medical reasons only? Perhaps these numbers are completely reasonable based on all the facts.

Another tidbit based on my experience... when I found out that the first fetus had died, the doctors did not want to induce labor (which for some reason didn't happen naturally). They wanted to send me to an abortion clinic to have a D&E. This didn't make sense to me at the time and doesn't today, but that's what happened. Although the baby was dead, it still would have been listed as an abortion in stats like this because it would still have been the surgical termination of a pregnancy even though the fetus had died. I was actually told by one of the doctors that it would just be considered a regular abortion. And I had to fight them to avoid this, and search for a doctor who would induce the labor. So maybe those numbers don't mean exactly what we think they mean.

I think we need more complete and meaningful information before we decide to pass laws. Raw numbers do not give us meaningful qualitative data. I still believe doctors are behaving ethically (not terminating late in pregnancy unless it's really needed), and if we are concerned that they are not, can we not make it an issue with medical oversight boards rather than an issue in courts? The few who are willing to do it can lose their license, and then it won't happen anymore. If I were 8 months pregnant I'd be willing to go out and do a little test of the system, go to doctors and ask them to terminate my perfectly healthy pregnancy. I sincerely don't believe I'd find takers. But if I'm proved wrong on this, or if we can find data on why these more than 9,000 late second trimester and third trimester abortions were performed, or if we do as I said and calculate out all the possibilities that might require late termination and it didn't add up to what's actually happening, OK, then let's take action.

But you know, there are groups devoted to this issue. People who, unlike you and me, have great amounts of time and numbers of people devoted to it. They have the time to do the calculations I'm talking about, and they have the ability to send pregnant women out as decoys to find out how far doctors are willing to go. And even with all that energy devoted to it, I don't think those groups are coming up with information that shows that these >9,000 abortions have been performed for unethical reasons.

You're right. I'm sorry I overstated. I didn't mean it like I wrote it.


I'm a bit more pragmatic. Would we be able to save that one life a year by legislating? Whether we would or not, how many innocent and already mourning people would suffer on account of those laws? Are we going to do more harm then good, or more good than harm? That matters to me. If the legislation isn't going to solve the problem, that matters to me as well. If we've got one woman a year deciding that she doesn't want a pregnancy at 27 weeks, who then finds a doctor who is willing to abort the pregnancy, I think medical oversight boards are doing their jobs pretty damned well. We can still remind them that it's important and ask them to tighten up further to try to prevent that one. If we've got 2,000 women a year doing the same and finding willing doctors, then those boards are not doing a good job. We can try pressuring them to make them self-police more closely, or we can pass laws.

The statistics, as I've shown, don't address it at all. What percentage of all pregnancies is this? And after that, what percentage of pregnancies would we expect to see terminated this late judging by the known frequncies of the problems that we'd consider good reason to terminate? Because of my experiences, I spent years involved with helping people who had problems getting pregnant and problems carrying pregnancies and all sorts of related issues. I don't know if the numbers add up, but I do know that situations I used to think of as being extremely rare and unlikely happen far more often than people generally are aware.

Right. What I meant (I think ) was that the way it would have to work would be that abortions that have already been performed would then be subject to review by prosecutors. We could not set up a system in which you need a court order before you can get the abortion, because that wait would be risking the mother's life in some cases.

It would be up to prosecutors... that's the way the legal system works in all circumstances, isn't it? The system doesn't alter to accomodate individual needs. First there is an arrest by the police. Charges are sent to the prosecutor, who then decides if there's a case to be made. If we've got a strong pro-life prosecutor, every case may be pursued just to punish the doctor or woman. The only way we can prevent arresting every woman who has a late abortion and/or her doctor (Do we arrest them both? Or which one? What about the husband, who agreed to it and was present?) is if we rely on medical review boards to check the medical records for each case and then report to the police each case in which the medicals may not meet a standard. So we're back to relying on medical review boards.

Daleth

How so? Was her husband holding her hostage? If so, is she likely in her right mind? Is she aware of the risks? Does she think she's saving her baby from abuse at the hands of whoever was holding her back? Or maybe she could not come up with $200 for an early abortion and somehow she can come up with considerably more money to have the later and more involved procedure performed?

I don't know, Helen. Maybe I'm being terribly naive or just not imaginative enough, but I can not think of circumstances that would cause a woman to suddenly pursue an abortion after going through half a year of pregnancy unless she were mentally incompetent at the time or had spent the first 6 months suffering some form of abuse. To me this sounds like the exact same person who abandons her newborn baby in the woods. Is this person thinking rationally?

I'm not sure I know entirely. One thing is the way the placenta is fused to the uterus. Early in the pregnancy, less of the uterus is affected. There's also more room to maneuver and less pressure from other organs when it's early. But all and all I don't entirely know why, just know that it's true. (And giving birth is also more dangerous than an early abortion, so it's not a surprise.) Perhaps one of our resident docs can come and fill us in on the reasons. As I try to type out what I believe I know, it is just entirely too gruesome.

You are correct... legislating limits or guidelines has been left up to the states.

Daleth

You see, there's the problem. You did not start with the premise that life begins at conception. When you leave that out, your argument doesn't include the protection of one life. It only includes the punishment of another. You should be careful how you say it, because it makes a huge difference.

Now, I agree with you that life begins at conception. It's got multiplying living cells, therefore it's alive. I do not agree that it's a baby, a person. The life, at that point, is similar to the life of a virus or bacteria. It doesn't think. It doesn't feel. It is not aware of its own existance. In nearly half the cases after conception, the embryo will fail to attach to the uterine lining and the woman will have a normal period. She was never even pregnant, because pregnancy begins at implantation, not conception. No one will ever know. Would it make sense to mourn the death of a child every time I have a period and know I had sex that cycle so there might have been a couple of cells with unique human DNA in the blood I passed? Why, exactly, do you think these cells that have the DNA information to potentially become a baby are the same thing as a baby, despite the fact that they don't have a brain or nerve endings to feel or be aware of anything at all? In a large percentage of cases, these cells won't survive the first 3 months. When they die, and the woman loses the pregnancy naturally, would you treat it as the death of a child? Would you ask when the funeral was to be held? Would you find it odd if they hung a picture of the embryo on their wall or (to be less morbid) framed a picture from their last live ultrasound and hung it over the mantle? If you would find that odd, but would not find it odd that they hung up a picture of their 5 day old baby who died in its sleep, what's the difference?

Sorry about that, but you didn't include this life or murder in your original statement.

No, we can't fix it, but we can try to get closer.