Roe v Wade is on deck

[Emily Lake]

But how about we ask both history and our European counterparts? Nothing I've proposed is new or novel in any way.

If you were born yesterday, yeah.
For millennia nobody said a word about restricting anbortion, until infant mortality was reduced to single digit percentages.

"Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art." - Hippocrates

Hippoocrates was making a personal statement. That statement does not say abortion should be restricted as a general rule. It is my meager understanding of history, that the sanctity of unborn life became an issue with the advent of Christianity. Certainly it was not an issue in ancient Greece or Rome.

Honestly, it became a bit of an issue whenever men because broadly aware that some women were choosing not to have kids. It's not like it was every widely celebrated as a woman's right. More often, it was a last resort when there were simply too many mouths to feed, or when the infant was believed to be female and a male heir was wanted.

Restrictions on abortion started becoming common at about the same time that surgical abortions became safe(ish). Medicinal abortions aren't generally effective past the first handful of weeks, let's call it the first trimester for simplicity, with the understanding that it's not specifically that. Basically, the various herbal medicines that can induce an abortion really only work early in the pregnancy; anything that could kill an older fetus would almost always kill the mother as well. Surgical abortions can be done on much more developed fetuses... and that's pretty much when laws against them started popping up.

 

[Emily Lake]

If you desire to protect freedom by the passing of laws, then I wasn't talking about you. But that's not what @Emily Lake was advocating.

You might want to consider whose freedom we're discussing... which is a rather important aspect of my argument.

I want the freedom to not be murdered. I assume that you also want that freedom. I assume that pretty much all humans are deserving of the freedom to not be murdered. Therefore, I consider "don't murder people" to be a pretty good law to have, and I view it to protect freedom.

I also extend that same freedom to fetuses that are reasonably likely to live and thrive outside the womb. But I'm not hardline about it. If the mother is going to die if the fetus lives, then the mom wins. If the mother is going to be physically harmed in a significant way if the fetus lives, then the mom wins. If the fetus is unlikely to live and thrive, then the mom wins (that's really not the right term there, but I hope you follow what I mean).

The only situation that is precluded in my view, is when the mother would be inconvenienced if the fetus lives... in which case, no you don't get to murder someone for your personal convenience.

 

[Emily Lake]

back then a popular public entertainment was catching cats and setting them on fire. Thankfully we now have laws against that sort of monstrosity.

Do you genuinely think that the reason this does not happen very much today, is that there is a law against it?

Yes.

Step back from the pedantically literal limitation of "burning cats" and think a bit more broadly. Even with laws against it, dog fighting, and cock fighting are still popular underground "sports". I speculate that without laws against such things, they'd be more popular and wouldn't be underground at all.

 

[Emily Lake]

I'm not asserting what you believe, I'm asserting what you literally said, and what the logical consequences of that are.

You absolutely ARE asserting that I believe something that I do not by asserting that <snip> is the logical consequence.

That's not how it works. People are not logic engines. It is entirely normal for people to believe premises but not believe conclusions that logically follow from their own premises. Sometimes that's rank inconsistency; sometimes it's just withholding judgment because they haven't yet worked out whether it's a logical consequence of their beliefs or not.

Consider the following two statements:

A: 12345678901 is a prime number.
B: 12345678901 is not a prime number.

One or the other of those is the logical consequence of a bunch of statements you undoubtedly believe. (For instance, statements like (X * (Y + 1)) = ((X * Y) + X)). And yet, unless you're some Ramanujan-level math prodigy, you almost certainly don't believe A and also don't believe B. If Emily figures out which statement is right and asserts that it's the logical consequence of your beliefs, she'll be perfectly correct, but she would not thereby be claiming you believe it. If she claimed you believe it she'd be wrong, until you work out the answer for yourself or ask someone you trust.

Point being, in this thread there've been an awful lot of attributions to misbehavior what can be better explained by insufficient reasoning. Let's all cut back on those attributions.

I haven't the time to try that many factorings... But luckily, someone else has programmed it in. 12345678901 is NOT prime, it's divisible by 857.

 

[Emily Lake]

Certainly: the same authority our society places over nearly everything in life, democracy.

You misspelled “law enforcement”.
I must have missed where Ems suggested putting abortion to a vote, case by case.

I didn't suggest putting it to a vote case by case, nor would I. I did suggest creating federal legislation. But I'd be perfectly happy to have it be a nationwide popular vote and bind congress to create laws based on that vote.

I would win.

 

[Emily Lake]

if nobody can prove he or she is right, Emily wins the argument by default

Bullshit. In this venue, that which can be shown to cause the least harm wins the argument. I have provided empirical support. Ems has shown that B20 is her champion, that’s all.

Your bias, which you refuse to own, is stinking up this thread with allusion and distraction.
The facts remain: abortion laws kill people and benefit nobody (but lawyers).

No, Elixir. You've shown that extremely restrictive abortion laws, as well as complete bans, kill people. I don't disagree with that, but neither am I proposing either of those.

On the other hand... every developed nation outside the US has abortion laws in place that are more restrictive than what I propose. And the vast majority of people in the US favor an approach that is in line with RvW. Not a minority, but the actual vast majority. Your view is in the extreme minority.

Which is fine - argue for what you believe in. But you need to actually do that, instead of arguing against strawmen of your own making.

 

[Emily Lake]

Whether or not an action that deprives someone of their life is considered to be murder is a legal decision.

Whether or not performing an abortion deprives anyone of anything has still to be answered.
It is dishonest to presume your opinion to be fact.

A fetus developed to 30 weeks can live outside the womb with minimal risk of long term health impacts.
If that fetus is prematurely delivered, then terminated outside the womb... do you consider it NOT murder? Do you consider that to have NOT deprived them of life?

 

[Toni]

What I personally believe is that there likely exists a circumstance where the scenario you so broadly described would in fact be the better choice.

Can you describe a hypothetical circumstance in which you think it would be ethical and appropriate to terminate a healthy third trimester fetus that presents no known health risk to the mother? I'm not asking for hard data, I'll be content with a ferinstance.

And that it is not MY choice or YOUR choice to decide. Nor is it lawmakers' choice to decide nor law enforcement's choice to make.

But it *is* the lawmaker's decision to make when it pertains to euthanasia, is it not? Providing guidelines for when it is allowable or defensible to deprive someone of life seems like a reasonable thing for lawmakers to do.

I don’t think it should be the law maker’s decision re: euthanasia. I’m not certain it is in every state.

Do you think that any person should be able to request medically assisted suicide for any reason? Or do you think it should be allowable only in certain situations?

Here's the thing that keeps getting conflated in this thread - it keeps getting framed as being "the lawmaker's decision" when in actuality, it's the doctor's decision, and the lawmaker is only setting the boundary conditions within which the doctor can make the decision.

And those boundary conditions exist because the lawmaker is literally defining an allowable exception to what would otherwise be considered murder.

I do think that a person should be allowed to request a medically assisted suicide. But I also think that a thorough examination by mental health professionals is in order first, as well as thorough examinations and serious discussions about why suicide is requested and if the patient might not benefit sufficiently from other, less permanent t treatment. Those in intractable pain is one such example. For myself, dementia would be an example under which I’d prefer assisted suicide for myself, having watched my mother die of dementia. I don’t want that for myself or for any family or loved ones to have to gf through watching me die like that.

I feel like we're working toward common ground on this. I'm reading this as a "should". That is, patients are allowed to request any service they wish, but doctors should provide thorough exams, have discussions about alternatives, and ensure the person isn't making a bad decision.

Do you think there should be repercussions for doctors who do NOT follow those "shoulds"? In the (unlikely) event that a healthy person going through athe divorce walks in the door and says "Hey doc, I'd like to call it quits", and the doctor says "Sure thing, let me just inject you with this"... do you think that doctor should face some sort of negative consequence for failing to provide the exams and discussions that you believe are reasonable and appropriate?

Doctors operate under multiple layers of legal, ethical, medical, professional and facility based guidance and restrictions now.

I do not understand where you get the idea that doctors are inclined or able to grant patients' requests based solely upon what the patient wants and whether or not the doctor agrees with them.

However, overly restricted access to services can create an unsafe, unregulated and unethical black market where there exists no safety or accountability. Sure, you might be able to find a doc who would provide an injection that would stop the patient's heart upon request but frankly it would be easier to find a drug dealer or user to deliver a hot shot and do the same thing

 

[Emily Lake]

a divorce walks in the door and says "Hey doc, I'd like to call it quits", and the doctor says "Sure thing, let me just inject you with this"...

Where do you keep finding these corrupt doctors?

Serious question: If assisted suicide is legal, then why would you consider this doctor to be corrupt?

 

[Elixir]

I did suggest creating federal legislation.

Thank you for confirming.
May I assume that the intent of such federal legislation would be to reduce the incidence of abortion, by dissuading some of those who would seek an optional late term abortion from doing so?

 

[Toni]

Whether or not an action that deprives someone of their life is considered to be murder is a legal decision.

Whether or not performing an abortion deprives anyone of anything has still to be answered.
It is dishonest to presume your opinion to be fact.

A fetus developed to 30 weeks can live outside the womb with minimal risk of long term health impacts.
If that fetus is prematurely delivered, then terminated outside the womb... do you consider it NOT murder? Do you consider that to have NOT deprived them of life?

Survival for how long? And at what cost (monetary, health, family structure, etc.)? A child delivered at 30 weeks faces immediate challenges but also life long risks.

Long-term consequences of prematurity

Due to a shortened period of in utero organ development, premature infants are at higher risk of chronic respiratory, cardiac, renal, and endocrine system disorders later in life. With more premature babies being born and more of them surviving, internists and primary care practitioners should...

www.ccjm.org

Effects of prematurity on organ systems, and management recommendations [TR] [th] Organ system​ [/th][th] Increased risks​ [/th][th] Management​ [/th]​

[td width="33.3333%"]

[td]

Pulmonary​

[/td][td]

Obstructive disease, pulmonary hypertension​

[/td][td]

Evaluate previous asthma diagnosis
Consider baseline pulmonary function testing
Avoid smoking, maintain healthy weight, promote exercise
Keep current on influenza and Pneumococcus vaccinations​

[/td]​

[td]

Renal​

[/td][td]

Chronic kidney disease​

[/td][td]

Monitor blood pressure regularly
Avoid nephrotoxins
Control blood pressure (consider an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor if a hypertension medication is needed)
Limit salt intake
Consider periodic urine microalbumin screening, renal ultrasonography​

[/td]​

[td]

Cardiovascular​

[/td][td]

Hypertension, ischemic heart disease, congestive heart failure, peripheral vascular disease​

[/td][td]

Monitor blood pressure regularly
Avoid smoking, maintain healthy weight, promote exercise
Consider baseline echocardiogram with appropriate cardiovascular risk assessment​

[/td]​

[td]

Endocrine​

[/td][td]

Diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, osteoporosis​

[/td][td]

Monitor blood glucose, body mass composition, lipids
Maintain healthy body weight and abdominal girth
Ensure appropriate calcium and vitamin D supplementation
Promote weight-bearing exercise
Limit medications associated with causing metabolic abnormalities, dyslipidemia, worsening bone density​

[/td]​

[td]

Central nervous system​

[/td][td]

Autism, mood disorders, intellectual disabilities​

[/td][td]

Be alert to need for early evaluation and support​

[/td]​

[/td]
[td width="33.3333%"][/td]
[td width="33.3333%"][/td]
[/TR]

My husband was born at 34 weeks gestation. He has had a lifetime history of various respiratory illnesses, including asthma and for one entre year, repeated bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia. I seriously thought I would be left a widow with 2 children in my mid-20's. Whether or not that was connected to his premature birth, I have no way of knowing. AFAIK, no doctor ever inquired and I did not attend every medical appointment.

I understand that you care very much about babies --me, too! But I also care very much about people being able to control their own bodies and to make their own medical and reproductive choices. I may not agree with those choices but I made my own choices and have lived with them.

 

[Emily Lake]

What I personally believe is that there likely exists a circumstance where the scenario you so broadly described would in fact be the better choice.

Can you describe a hypothetical circumstance in which you think it would be ethical and appropriate to terminate a healthy third trimester fetus that presents no known health risk to the mother? I'm not asking for hard data, I'll be content with a ferinstance.

And that it is not MY choice or YOUR choice to decide. Nor is it lawmakers' choice to decide nor law enforcement's choice to make.

But it *is* the lawmaker's decision to make when it pertains to euthanasia, is it not? Providing guidelines for when it is allowable or defensible to deprive someone of life seems like a reasonable thing for lawmakers to do.

I don’t think it should be the law maker’s decision re: euthanasia. I’m not certain it is in every state.

Do you think that any person should be able to request medically assisted suicide for any reason? Or do you think it should be allowable only in certain situations?

Here's the thing that keeps getting conflated in this thread - it keeps getting framed as being "the lawmaker's decision" when in actuality, it's the doctor's decision, and the lawmaker is only setting the boundary conditions within which the doctor can make the decision.

And those boundary conditions exist because the lawmaker is literally defining an allowable exception to what would otherwise be considered murder.

I do think that a person should be allowed to request a medically assisted suicide. But I also think that a thorough examination by mental health professionals is in order first, as well as thorough examinations and serious discussions about why suicide is requested and if the patient might not benefit sufficiently from other, less permanent t treatment. Those in intractable pain is one such example. For myself, dementia would be an example under which I’d prefer assisted suicide for myself, having watched my mother die of dementia. I don’t want that for myself or for any family or loved ones to have to gf through watching me die like that.

I feel like we're working toward common ground on this. I'm reading this as a "should". That is, patients are allowed to request any service they wish, but doctors should provide thorough exams, have discussions about alternatives, and ensure the person isn't making a bad decision.

Do you think there should be repercussions for doctors who do NOT follow those "shoulds"? In the (unlikely) event that a healthy person going through athe divorce walks in the door and says "Hey doc, I'd like to call it quits", and the doctor says "Sure thing, let me just inject you with this"... do you think that doctor should face some sort of negative consequence for failing to provide the exams and discussions that you believe are reasonable and appropriate?

Doctors operate under multiple layers of legal, ethical, medical, professional and facility based guidance and restrictions now.

It appears that you don't actually have a problem with legal restrictions on how doctors operate. Is this accurate?

I do not understand where you get the idea that doctors are inclined or able to grant patients' requests based solely upon what the patient wants and whether or not the doctor agrees with them.

It's the logical consequence, Toni.

*If* assisted suicide is legal and *if* there are no meaningful restrictions with negative impacts, and *if* a doctor agrees with the patient, *then* there's quite literally nothing to stop them. If both the doctor and the patient agree to assisted suicide, then there's quite literally no action that can be taken if that patient was just momentarily out of their head. There are no safeguards and no boundary conditions.

You say you don't understand where I get the idea that doctors will just grant patient's requests based on shared beliefs. I don't understand how you think they don't exist. Angels of Mercy are a thing, there've been many documented cases when it was entirely illegal. If you make it legal, then that particular flavor of serial killer arguably gets green-lit. Doctors and nurses aren't comic book superheroes - there are absolutely unethical, immoral, and downright heinous doctors out there. And over the last decade, there are a whole lot of cases of doctors doing what a patient asks for, with no meaningful oversight or consideration for whether it's the right thing to do.

There is no single governing body that defines what is and is not allowable for doctors. There is no supreme oversight body.

However, overly restricted access to services can create an unsafe, unregulated and unethical black market where there exists no safety or accountability. Sure, you might be able to find a doc who would provide an injection that would stop the patient's heart upon request but frankly it would be easier to find a drug dealer or user to deliver a hot shot and do the same thing

Sure, overly restricted access creates an unsafe environment. But that's no reason to swing all the way to completely unrestricted. How about we settle on well-regulated with reasonable restrictions?

 

[Bomb#20]

You absolutely ARE asserting that I believe something that I do not by asserting that <snip> is the logical consequence.

That's not how it works. People are not logic engines. It is entirely normal for people to believe premises but not believe conclusions that logically follow from their own premises. Sometimes that's rank inconsistency; sometimes it's just withholding judgment because they haven't yet worked out whether it's a logical consequence of their beliefs or not.

Consider the following two statements:

A: 12345678901 is a prime number.
B: 12345678901 is not a prime number.

How about we stop with analogies? Argument via analogy is just void. I can't defeat the proposition, so let me do a little creative rework.

It's not an analogy. It's a proof by counterexample that the inference rule she used is invalid.

Point being, in this thread there've been an awful lot of attributions to misbehavior what can be better explained by insufficient reasoning. Let's all cut back on those attributions.

You mean like when you attributed malice to the Democrats for keeping abortion from being passed as a right in Congress because they felt it was better for them in the voter booth? That sort of misbehavior attribution?

Yes, I mean exactly that sort of misbehavior attribution. I do not claim not to have been a participant in this blamefest -- that's why I directed the proposal at us, not at y'all.

But that said, why do you think the Democratic congressional leadership's repeated decisions not to bring the submitted RvW legislation to a vote can be better explained by insufficient reasoning?

 

[Emily Lake]

I did suggest creating federal legislation.

Thank you for confirming.
May I assume that the intent of such federal legislation would be to reduce the incidence of abortion, by dissuading some of those who would seek an optional late term abortion from doing so?

The objective is to disallow late term abortions that do not have a solid medical indication for them.

Put bluntly: The objective is to make it illegal to kill babies for convenience, even if such situations would be rare.

 

[Elixir]

A fetus developed to 30 weeks can live outside the womb with minimal risk of long term health impacts.
If that fetus is prematurely delivered, then terminated outside the womb... do you consider it NOT murder? Do you consider that to have NOT deprived them of life?

You are insanely preoccupied with whatever I “consider” deprivation, murder, etc.

READ CAREFULLY:
I do NOT consider my opinions on those things germane to the process of arriving at the legislation or lack thereof that results in the least pain and suffering.

You apparently feel that imposing your visceral sense of morality and ethics via legislation will unerringly lead to that benign state, whereas I look at real life examples, and see that such legislation causes harm and suffering without any quantifiable benefit.
I OPPOSE abortion laws for THAT reason, not because I wish abortion on anyone or on any fetus or consider your hypothetical corrupt doctors “okay” or think that killing a viable healthy fetus is cool.
I believe that abortion laws are bad because they cause people to suffer and die without equitable benefit in return, as well as providing perverse opportunity to authoritarians to do what authoritarians do.
The stats bear me out.

 

[Jarhyn]

a divorce walks in the door and says "Hey doc, I'd like to call it quits", and the doctor says "Sure thing, let me just inject you with this"...

Where do you keep finding these corrupt doctors? If your lifevis populated by people like that, no laws are going to mitigate your misery.
There are nurses who have been found to have killed dozens or hundreds of people who never wanted to be killed. Why not campaign for more legal oversight of nurses? Because laws already exist, proving ONCE AGAIN that

YOU CAN’T LEGISLATE DESPICABLE BEHAVIOR BY DESPICABLE PEOPLE OUT OF EXISTENCE.

IMHO the prevention track record is better for shaming than for jailing. Psychos gonna psycho no matter what. I don’t think we should build our society around them.

I dunno. To be fair, we do have to at least build our society around discovering and preventing psychotic acts.

I just think that it's psychotic to let the genital inspectors into the abortion clinic, and it's less psychotic to tolerate a psychotic person deciding they don't want a kid than it is to tolerate genital inspectors delaying important medical decisions.

 

[Elixir]

You've shown that extremely restrictive abortion laws, as well as complete bans, kill people. I don't disagree with that, but neither am I proposing either of those.

I started with baseline stats from during RvW. The harms and the benefits of what restrictions it retained, were negligible afaics, and I’d not be so strident in objecting, we’re it not for the camels nose effect, which has landed us in a dire situation.
The INTENT is admirable enough, and as every cliche since forever has pointed out, the result is awful. Roads to Hell etc.
I can simultaneously admire the intent and despise the result. I do not think it rational to keep doing stuff like that.

 

[Elixir]

To be fair, we do have to at least build our society around discovering and preventing psychotic acts.

Disagree. We build our society around minimizing psychoses by minimizing conditions that produce psychos.
Psychotic acts as a primary focus of a society bespeaks a fucked up society.

 

[Jarhyn]

To be fair, we do have to at least build our society around discovering and preventing psychotic acts.

Disagree. We build our society around minimizing psychoses by minimizing conditions that produce psychos.
Psychotic acts as a primary focus of a society bespeaks a fucked up society.

Frankly, I think we can do both? It's just psychotic to allow government genital inspectors into our reproductive health care at any stage of it... and this is, ultimately, where all this is going.

I mean FFS it's government mandated penetrative genital inspection with these bullshit transvaginal ultrasounds.

It's literally "tolerate someone penetrating you AGAIN to get clearance to get this way-too-probably psychopathic *spawn* thing out of you".

It's disgusting.

It's fucking "genital inspections" as much as anything anyone did that ever "turned frogs gay".

That's fucking psychotic. And now people are trying to insert that authority and enforcement further and further.

And again... If someone is that much of a psycho, I will fully support their decision to neither have nor raise a child!

 

[Elixir]

Frankly, I think we can do both? It's just psychotic to allow government genital inspectors into our reproductive health care at any stage of it... and this is, ultimately, where all this is going.

In a giant leap for mankind toward sanity, it would be great to get the government out of our reproductive healthcare decisions altogether. Seems pretty far out of reach for now.