Jewel

Not just mine.

SLD

OK, just a few observations without getting too much into this. It's obviously sensitive issue for a lot of people.

VTBoy: Have you read any of the SCOTUS decisions on abortion such as Lochner, Griswold, Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood? You talk a lot about your objections to third trimester abortions. Are you aware that the original Roe v. Wade case allowed states to outlaw third tri-mester abortions? I can understand a person's objection to abortions of perfectly healthy third tri-mester fetuses that could otherwise live outside their mother's womb. I doubt you'd find many people who object to that. (maybe a few.)


Emily: I read recently about a suburban Michigan housewife who was a staunch Democrat and Gore supporter who said she'd be voting for Bush in 2004. Women seem to be turning towards Bush because of their fear of terrorism, and that Bush is making them feel safe. I don't understand that logic. The right wing, as usual, is exploiting people's fear in order to further a not so hidden agenda of destroying women's rights, other civil liberties and rewarding corporate America.

Getting mad with one anti-abortion religious right wing guy won't do it. You need to get involved in the election and promotion of pro-choice and otherwise progressive candidates for political office. Even if the cause seems hopeless right now. The tables will turn eventually, and sticking to our guns now will pay dividends in the long run. But frankly the pro choice movement has dropped out of sight in the last 10 years. In 1989, the pro choice movement, with reproductive rights under serious attack, organized a huge rally on the mall that dwarfed the pro-choice piddling little showing earlier in the year. It had a dramatic effect on Capitol Hill, and probably effected the outcome of the 1992 election as well as the selection of moderates to the Supreme Court such as Souter. In short, the so called pro-life movement may be more vocal and organized, but it cannot hold a candle to the pro-choice movement if it ever gets off its duff again and moves on Washington the way it did. The ACLU has had enormous success in its membership drives as a result of this Presidency. So too can pro-choice organizations (perhaps they have alreadY), but I think if you're that serious about it, move on it now and get involved instead of just posting on the internet (although that's not unimportant either).

SLD

Emily

I plan on going to a pro-chioce movement in April held in washington DC, so at least I will be doing something then..I still can't help but get annoyed by people that have the wrong opionion. Bush does not make me feel safe at all, and I think his abortion policys are wack...again here is a man trying to tell woman what to do...it not even a matter of abortion..its a matter of having the right of chioce. All of you seem like really smart people..except for VTboy.. VTboy you first say you dont have a problem with the abortion except for the third trimester..blah blah blah..well thats already been made illegal except for minimal cases..yadda yadda..you send links to dumb anti abortion websites, I dont have time for this!

Toto

March for Freedom of Choice: Save Women’s Lives

or

March for Freedom of Choice website

Slate commentary on the march and the Supreme Court

Saletan's book coming out this August:
Bearing Right : How Conservatives Won the Abortion War by William Saletan

Just one note - third trimester abortions are not illegal. They could have been regulated under Roe, but the early anti-abortion movement did not want to compromise and participate in anything that recognized the legitimacy of abortions in the first two trimesters. But as a matter of practice, doctors just don't do abortions at that stage without a really good reason.

scigirl

Here’s some interesting statistics from the CDC web site:

http://www.kff.org/content/2003/3269..._Factsheet.pdf

* The risk of death associated with abortion between 1993 and 1997 was 0.6 per 100,000 abortions, making it one of the safest surgical procedures in the US. The risk of maternal death from childbirth is 6.7 per 100,000.

* 89% of abortions are performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy; nearly 56% within the first 8 weeks. Just one percent of all abortions occur at 21 weeks or later.

* 54% of women who had an abortion in 2000 said that they used contraception in the month that they conceived.

* From 1994-2000, abortion rates declined by 27 percent among adolescents aged 15-19, while rates among low-income women (those living below 100% of the federal poverty line) increased by 25%.
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As to those Kansas statistics – since they seemed to be at odds with every single other study I found (that said third trimester pregnancies were done for medical reasons). Therefore, I investigated further. As I suspected, this Kansas data is an anomaly, and now partial birth abortions are illegal in that state. This site has the story:
http://www.joplinglobe.com/archives/...al/story6.html

Apparently, all those “mental health” abortions were done by a man named Dr. Tiller (who survived an assassination attempt by a radical anti-abortionist). Most of them were done on women who were out of state. Here’s what the above article says:
Why do they come to Kansas?
So it looks like this particular doctor was using a loophole to allow third-trimester abortions for women who came from out of state. Now, he can’t, since partial birth abortions have not been performed since 1999, according to this site:

http://www.kdhe.state.ks.us/hci/01itop1.pdf

Makes you wonder how many of these abortions would have been done earlier if Missouri had made abortion more available to these women. So my conclusion – the Kansas stats are an anomaly, probably because of having to be an abortion provider for a neighboring state, and they no longer are occurring.
Every other site I read indicated just the opposite – that third trimester abortions are 1) very rare, and 2) done because of severe medical reasons.



From the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:
http://eileen.250x.com/Main/PBAinfo/PBA_ACOG.htm
VTboy – my advice is to get your information from legitimate scientific sources, and to look at all the cases. Ask yourself – does this data make sense in the context of what’s known, and done, in most places in the world? Yes you found an example of a doctor performing abortions for strange reasons – who is no longer performing them. That’s one example out of hundreds that are doing the procedure for legitimate medical reasons. Unfortunately, extreme pro and anti-choice websites rarely evaluate all the evidence, so you have to dig to get at the truth.

scigirl

Toto

VTboy did not provide any proof that there were "mental health" late term abortions - he simply asserted it. The Kansas statistics did not indicate that any of the abortions were done for "mental health." They were all done to "prevent substantial and irreversable impairment of a major bodily function."

When that one late-term abortion provider was driven out of Kansas, the statistics changed. There was no "loophole" that was closed, and women in those situations are presumably getting their abortions done somewhere else now. Partial-birth abortions are not illegal there or anywhere - they are just not being done.

The Guttmacher Institute indicates that when the reason for the late term abortion is listed as "mental health," the actual reason is that the fetus has major abnormalities.

We still have no evidence that any healthy woman bearing a healthy fetus ever had a late term abortion for a frivolous reason. This, of course, has not prevented irresponsible anti-abortion activists or members of Congress from asserting that late term abortions are done on healthy women with viable fetuses.

Ron Garrett

I'm sure someone has already asked this question, but at the risk of redundancy, why must abortion be justified, and to whom?

On what basis do we propose to grant the state authority to seize a woman's person and dictate her reproduction? How is this different than a Southern slave owner in the 1850's forcing one of his slave chattel to breed? And why are so many men so consumed with controlling the reproductive freedom of women? Why do anti-abortion men murder doctors and blow up clinics?

I simply don't buy all this feigned concern for the unborn from the same political elements that fought integration, oppose federal funding of child care, slashed assistance to single mothers, fiddled as AIDS spread, (and opposed needle exchanges because, after all, it was a Gay Plague) and doesn't give a rat's ass how many innocent men get executed because state sanctioned murder in prisons is in the community interest. These same humanitarians don't give a damn about cluster bombing children as long as they are Arabs or Asians.

I think the real issue here is that some really insecure little men just can't deal with their loss of control over women. Deal with it or don't. You primates and primitives out there want to turn women into chattel again? Not going to happen. Move on.

dangin

Hi Ron,

Nice to see you. Oh, and absolutely right too.

simian

As a former resident of Kansas.

There is one clinic in the state that performs late-term abortions. A murder attempt was made on him in about 1993 or 1994 (he was shot in the arm, with the intent to kill him).

The clinic is not just regional, but noted through a large part of the nation. About 1998 there was a case in MI - 12-YO girl pregnant by her brother. Pregnancy endangered future reproductive possibilities. Decision made to abort. Had to go out of state (KS, if I remember correctly) - had to go through the court system to do this. Made national news.

I am way too lazy or busy right now to find links to these items right now, but the MI case should give some indication of at least one late-term abortion during (roughly) the KS data was compiled, if anybody is interested in looking into the facts of that case.

Simian

hezekiah jones

Originally posted by simian
About 1998 there was a case in MI - 12-YO girl pregnant by her brother. Pregnancy endangered future reproductive possibilities.

And one of the people that would deny termination of such a pregnancy, through government force, is none other than the top legal official in the United States at the moment.