Roe v Wade is on deck

[Emily Lake]

I'm going to step back a moment. Let's approach this from a different perspective.

@Toni , @Elixir , @bilby , @ZiprHead , @Jimmy Higgins and anyone else who would like to answer:

Let's assume a situation in which there is no known risk or deleterious condition in the fetus, and no known risks to the mother's health or life. For all intents, both the mother and the fetus are healthy.

Given that the normal length of a pregnancy in humans is 40 weeks...

At how many weeks of gestation do you think a reasonable doctor should refuse to perform an abortion in this situation?

That depends on the situation. Every case is unique.

Bilby's answer: "Even though we have thousands and thousands of years of experience behind us indicating what normal fetal development is and how long a pregnancy lasts, and whether or not a fetus is healthy, and we've got tons of medical technology that can monitor and determine the health of the mother and the fetus... well, we totally just can't ever know anything about anything, it's all just a weird mysterious process where there's this parasite and then sometimes there's some magic and it gets born, but if it's not yet born, there's totally no way to know anything because everything is totally unique and it's all a mystery... "

That depends on the situation. Every case is unique.

FTFY.

Don't try to put words in my mouth; You are very bad at it.

If you think I'm putting words in your mouth, all you have to do is provide a scenario in which you think a reasonable doctor should refuse to perform an abortion. Saying "every situation is unique" is a non-answer, it's a dodge.

Just one situation. That's all - give me one single scenario in which you personally believe that a reasonable doctor would be expected to refuse to perform an abortion.

 

[Emily Lake]

3) I actually do think there's a reasonable cut-off that should be generally honored (even if I'm not quite sure what that cut-off is), and because I am not sure, and am aware that nobody can ever be sure, I don't want a law to be made specifying a particular cut-off.

This is literally the very first time you've bothered to say this.

Of course, you can't say that, because you'd have to admit that I'm not the evil monster you've painted me to be. And that I am right.

I don't think you're right, but I also don't think you're a monster. I do think that up until now you have been tap-dancing and dodging, and unwilling to actually provide a clear statement of your view.

This entire discussion boils down to you wanting a law (ideally one that's a close to being fair and reasonable as possible), while I (bilby, btw) and Elixir do NOT want ANY law, because no matter how close it gets to being reasonable, there will still be cases where women die because the law frightens doctors away from giving them the abortion they need in order to live.

Why do you think women will die? Seriously, this is where I end up thinking you guys can't be assed to actually read and use your brains.

If the law explicitly allows abortions if there's a risk to the mother's life or health... why would they die? Do you think doctors are so inept that they're incapable of making a medical decision of risk?

How many women die for lack of abortions in your sunny nation? Is this a serious problem that you're out campaigning to fix?

I understand your hatred of freedom commitment to rule of law, but as I don't share your authoritarian bent, I don't agree with it at all.

I understand your hatred of babies commitment to maternal health, but as I don't share your heartless psychopathy, I don't agree with it at all.

Alternatively, how about you just stop being a jerk? In this post, you criticize me because you feel that I have portrayed you as a monster. But in the exact same post, mere moment later, you feel entirely justified painting me as a monster yet again. Be less hypocritical.

 

[Elixir]

Emily seems to think no doctor has ever refused to perform an abortion on a healthy late term fetus. So politicians need to force them.
Whose happiness? She asks.
PEOPLE’s happiness is paramount, and I have provided evidence that PEOPLE suffer and die from abortion laws, while Emily has produce NOTHING to support her assertion that fetuses suffer from their absence.
So, even granting fetuses rights equal to those of the mother, the greater good is served by doing away with those harmful laws.
Not rocket science.

 

[Elixir]

Why do you think women will die?

Because women are dying?
Just a guess.

Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care.

Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom​

I bet THAT fetus was happy about it, eh!

Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom

Complaints about pregnant women being turned away from emergency rooms spiked in the months after states began enacting strict abortion laws following the 2022 U.S.

apnews.com

We could go on all day, but your wronged fetuses seem to not be in evidence while PEOPLE suffering and dying are very much so, often right along with the fetus you profess to care so much about.
It’s inhumane and stupid.

YES I WOULD BE DELIGHTED IN THE SHORT TERM TO SEE RVW REINSTATED but if it was, we’d end up right back here before long.

 

[Emily Lake]

Do you personally believe that it's reasonable to abort a healthy fetus when there's no known risk to the mother at all.

Such a situation cannot occur; There is always a risk to the mother.

You know you're justifying abortions at 39.5 weeks without any identifiable risks whatsoever, based on a hypothetical "oh, we can't know 100% for sure, there's always some risk"

And while her doctor might be able to make a sound professional assessment of whether that risk is outweighed by the risks inherent in the abortion, her congressman certainly is not. So having a law that overrides (or could override) the doctor's opinion is a BAD IDEA.

What part of "any risk to the mother's health or life" are you not getting? In what way do you think this is overriding the doctor's opinion?

 

[Emily Lake]

You have repeatedly expressed your belief that there should be no restrictions of any kind whatsoever on abortion

The missing word is LEGAL.

There should be no LEGAL restrictions of any kind whatsoever on abortion.

Exactly what kind of restrictions would you accept? What non-legal restrictions would you countenance?

Indeed, more broadly, there should be as few LEGAL restrictions as practical on literally everything. Because that's the definition of freedom, and I like freedom (even if you don't).

Lol, oh my! I never thought I'd see the day when you came out for massive deregulations across the board.

 

[Emily Lake]

if a healthy woman with a healthy fetus decides at 35 weeks gestation that she doesn't want to carry the fetus to term and a doctor is willing to abort it, that's just fine, no problem, it's perfectly reasonable.

IF that unlikely situation were to arise, then it would be MORE reasonable to permit it, than it would be to risk the lives of the far larger number of women who, discovering to their dismay that their 35 week fetus is severely impaired, would be refused an abortion because doctors are unwilling to fall afoul of the law and of the rabid anti-abortion lobby who would doubtless harass any doctor who made such a medically necessary decision.

Is this a problem you see in your country? Are there so very many women with severely impaired fetuses being put at risk by terrified doctors? Or are you actively out campaigning to change your own country's laws regarding abortion?

 

[Emily Lake]

IMO what is reasonable is what the doctor and the patient decide is reasonable.

IMO, I can only speculate about what I would do as a woman who did not want to carry a fetus to term or what I would do as a physician who was asked to perform an abortion under ( insert circumstance).

By your statement here...

Toni believes that if a healthy woman with a healthy fetus decides at 35 weeks gestation that she doesn't want to carry the fetus to term and a doctor is willing to abort it, that's just fine, no problem, it's perfectly reasonable.

Do you agree with my inference from your statement?

Not do I believe that aliens kidnap humans and impregnate them,

But both the woman and the doctor have agreed it's reasonable - therefore you also agree it's reasonable. That's what you've said, that's the position you've taken.

What part of this do you disagree with? Would you like to alter your prior statement?

 

[Emily Lake]

IF you care what I think, then stick to claiming that I think the things I said.

She needs that tattooed on the back of her hands. Vitriolic attacks and false accusations that “you think X” are EMS’ stock in trade.

Plus, she makes zero sense. I point out that abortion laws are proven to kill people. Instead of not wanting to kill people, Em sez it’s okay;

“Proven to be true which is why hordes and hordes of women are dying all throughout Europe and Australia, which have STRICTER limits than I've proposed.”

So, she just wants to kill smaller “hordes”.
What a humanitarian.

Dishonesty and irrationality are a toxic brew, and Emily is serving up enough of it to make the dead hordes roll over in their graves.

Your complete lack of self-awareness is astonishing.

 

[Emily Lake]

If you or I went into a hospital or clinic and demanded our left arm be removed, no one would do that. Or give our 11 year old son double D breast implants or a vasectomy for example, just to be absurd. If I went into my local clinic with a partially amputated finger, they'd stabilize me and send me to a well equipped hospital because they lack the appropriate facilities and expertise to provide the optimal outcome.

Or you know... if your 11 year old son didn't want to go through puberty, and wanted to be chemically castrated, or if your 13 year old daughter decided she wanted a bilateral mastectomy? Or if your 17 year old son wanted a complete penectomy and orchiectomy? No doctor would ever do those things... right?

 

[Emily Lake]

If you or I went into a hospital or clinic and demanded our left arm be removed, no one would do that.

This is not totally accurate. Someone might, but the process is not so simple as "merely" walking in and demanding it.

It might take all of a year or two of evaluations and looking for a doctor who really understands, but as regards your own body the law gives you wide latitude, and there are plenty of humans who will have the mental wherewithal to remove someone's healthy arm because they were clear about why and that they vigorously consented to the operation.

This does in fact happen on occasion that someone CAN get a "healthy" arm removed.

People can get all kinds of healthy tissue that displeases them removed, when they take the time to go through proper channels.

They can also coerce the removal of "healthy" tissue through improper channels by making the tissue no-longer-healthy, though this is generally frowned upon. This is generally the reason why those other channels were opened.

Jarhyn is not wrong on this. You might be surprised at how often things that you assume should never happen actually do happen.

The fact that things we assume should never happen actually do happen is why we end up with a lot of laws.

 

[Emily Lake]

If you or I went into a hospital or clinic and demanded our left arm be removed, no one would do that.

This is not totally accurate. Someone might, but the process is not so simple as "merely" walking in and demanding it.

It might take all of a year or two of evaluations and looking for a doctor who really understands, but as regards your own body the law gives you wide latitude, and there are plenty of humans who will have the mental wherewithal to remove someone's healthy arm because they were clear about why and that they vigorously consented to the operation.

This does in fact happen on occasion that someone CAN get a "healthy" arm removed.

People can get all kinds of healthy tissue that displeases them removed, when they take the time to go through proper channels.

They can also coerce the removal of "healthy" tissue through improper channels by making the tissue no-longer-healthy, though this is generally frowned upon. This is generally the reason why those other channels were opened.

Yep. This is a real, mental condition, but I can't remember the name of it. I first heard about it when I was in college. A student with this condition went into the student woodshop and cut off his hand with a radial arm saw, on purpose. He was airlifted to Stanford hospital but he insisted that doctors not try to attach it, as he would just cut it off again. But yeah, after mental evaluation, it turns out these people are much happier with their particular appendage surgically removed. Their brain considers it alien and/or a deformity in a way. Weird.

Body Identity Integrity Disorder. It's a mental health condition.

Some people might end up "happier" without that arm, but they've made themselves disabled and doctors who remove those health limbs are complicit in causing harm. They give up on trying to treat the actual condition and just affirm the delusion. To me, it's akin to prescribing ozempic to an anorexic, because it makes them happy to have someone affirm that they're overweight.

 

[Emily Lake]

I’ll speculate that will take weeks and people will die. That’s what happens now.

Audits occur AFTER the procedure, you get that, right?

 

[Emily Lake]

For millennia nobody said a word about restricting anbortion, until infant mortality was reduced to single digit percentages.

This is stupid, Elixir. For millennia, abortions were medicinally induced, and only early in the pregnancy, and often either didn't work or killed the mother. Surgical abortions have only been around for a relatively short period of time, only a couple of hundred years - and there have been laws in place since they first started being performed. Those laws largely came about because surgical abortions happened at much later stages of pregnancy than medicinal abortions were ever possible - at a point where the infant could move, and where the vast majority of people considered it an actual baby.

 

[bilby]

In this post, you criticize me because you feel that I have portrayed you as a monster. But in the exact same post, mere moment later, you feel entirely justified painting me as a monster yet again. Be less hypocritical.

How is it "painting you as a monster" to describe your desire to have a legal rule as "authoritarian"? That's what the word "authoritarian" means.

Or are you saying that you don't want there to be a legally defined cut off date after which abortions are unlawful, and that my suggesting that you do paints you as a monster?

If I feel upset that you have portrayed me as a monster, it is not hypocritical for me to then accurately describe your position, such that you feel that that description is monstrous.

If you desire to limit freedom by the passing of laws then you are an authoritarian. That's what the word means.

If you feel that "authoritarian" is synonymous with "monster", then the problem would appear to be that you are painting yourself as a monster...

 

[bilby]

In what way do you think this is overriding the doctor's opinion?

By the introduction of a delay.

Time is of the essence, and the anti-abortion lobby knows full well that if they can drag things out in court for long enough, the result will go their way by default.

Justice delayed is justice denied, and never more so than in the case of legal wrangling over whether or not to grant someone the right to an abortion.

Justice is best served by denying the courts and the legislature any input at all, prior to the act.

 

[laughing dog]

If you or I went into a hospital or clinic and demanded our left arm be removed, no one would do that. Or give our 11 year old son double D breast implants or a vasectomy for example, just to be absurd. If I went into my local clinic with a partially amputated finger, they'd stabilize me and send me to a well equipped hospital because they lack the appropriate facilities and expertise to provide the optimal outcome.

Or you know... if your 11 year old son didn't want to go through puberty, and wanted to be chemically castrated, or if your 13 year old daughter decided she wanted a bilateral mastectomy? Or if your 17 year old son wanted a complete penectomy and orchiectomy? No doctor would ever do those things... right?

No doctor ought to do anything to a minor without consultation with a parent/guardian especially irreversible actions.

Really, your response is not at all applicable.

 

[Emily Lake]

Why do you think women will die?

Because women are dying?
Just a guess.

Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care.

Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom​

Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom

Complaints about pregnant women being turned away from emergency rooms spiked in the months after states began enacting strict abortion laws following the 2022 U.S.

apnews.com

You're using situations that occur under a COMPLETE BAN of abortions of any sort to counter reinstating the reasonable restrictions that existed under RvW. And because you continue to miss the point, those restrictions exist in every European nation and Australia as well - and they're almost all MORE RESTRICTIVE than what I've suggested.


You know what's kind of funny here? You're essentially using the same form of argument that really hard-core 2ndAm folks use. Swap out the specific item in question, and you're pretty much saying "When people aren't allowed to own guns, they end up getting killed by criminals... therefore we shouldn't have any restrictions on any guns of any sort ever." It completely ignores that a very reasonable middle grown is to protect the right to firearms, while also instituting reasonable (not excessive) waiting periods, requiring criminal background checks, and disallowing people with documented serious mental health issue from walking around with pistols.

 

[Toni]

IMO what is reasonable is what the doctor and the patient decide is reasonable.

IMO, I can only speculate about what I would do as a woman who did not want to carry a fetus to term or what I would do as a physician who was asked to perform an abortion under ( insert circumstance).

By your statement here...

Toni believes that if a healthy woman with a healthy fetus decides at 35 weeks gestation that she doesn't want to carry the fetus to term and a doctor is willing to abort it, that's just fine, no problem, it's perfectly reasonable.

Do you agree with my inference from your statement?

Not do I believe that aliens kidnap humans and impregnate them,

But both the woman and the doctor have agreed it's reasonable - therefore you also agree it's reasonable. That's what you've said, that's the position you've taken.

What part of this do you disagree with? Would you like to alter your prior statement?

I don’t believe your inference.

Seriously Emily, I don’t know why you work so hard to misrepresent what other people are saying but I’m not playing your game any more.

 

[Toni]

IF you care what I think, then stick to claiming that I think the things I said.

She needs that tattooed on the back of her hands. Vitriolic attacks and false accusations that “you think X” are EMS’ stock in trade.

Plus, she makes zero sense. I point out that abortion laws are proven to kill people. Instead of not wanting to kill people, Em sez it’s okay;

“Proven to be true which is why hordes and hordes of women are dying all throughout Europe and Australia, which have STRICTER limits than I've proposed.”

So, she just wants to kill smaller “hordes”.
What a humanitarian.

Dishonesty and irrationality are a toxic brew, and Emily is serving up enough of it to make the dead hordes roll over in their graves.

Your complete lack of self-awareness is astonishin

And another irony meter bites the dust.