Roe v Wade is on deck

[Emily Lake]

Re-reading some of this thread, hoping not to be again accused of intellectual sloth (call me stupid instead - it’s more accurate) I came across some revelatory stuff.

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

Disallowance as an objective? How is that constructive? I would hope for an outcome-based objective instead of disallowance for disallowance’s sake.
(I think I already took down the “solid medical indication” bit.)

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

Making stuff illegal as an objective is downright perverse IMO. Call me crazy but I thought making things illegal NECESSARILY had objectives to diminish whatever behavior is being illegalized.
I’m SURE that’s what Emily meant, but her choice of phrasing reveals an underlying authoritarian bent.

Don't be stupid. The objective is DON'T MURDER BABIES.

You changed your stated objective. That’s okay, I put it down to the habitually sloppy thinking that characterizes your posts on this subject. But you’re still indulging that sloppiness, and it appears intentional.
FETUSES ARE NOT “BABIES”, Emily.
That’s why they’re called fetuses.

I don’t believe you would call a baby a fetus, but you blithely do the reverse to muddy the waters.

From the very beginning, I have unambiguously stated that at some point in the pregnancy - generally the third trimester - it stops being a fetus and is a baby. That's the entire premise of my position, Elixir, and I have NOT been unclear about that.

 

[Emily Lake]

As you pointed out, Roe v Wade was an interpretation of law because there was no specific law. There is still no specific nationwide law. Perhaps if you contemplated why that is, you might grasp why someone might view your position unreasonably optimistic.

Yes, yes, incurably optimistic to advocate for an actual nationwide law to be put in place. Absolutely a crazy idea.

 

[Emily Lake]

Whether you wish to admit it or not, the reality of your position is that you want to mandate some pregnant woman has to put her life in danger to satisfy your "religious" view about a fetus's personhood.

False. Demonstrably false based on my actual stated position and the policy approach that I support.

 

[Elixir]

"Some states have really bad regulations, therefore the only possible solution is to have no regulations whatsoever!!!"

Not at all. Criminal laws are inherently bad unless they render some measurable good. All solutions are possible, including benevolent regulatory structures that may be of positive value or break even on the help/harm spectrum.

YMMV, but I am more wary of criminalizing behaviors in general, than I am of the “crimes” a lot of the time. Especially these days.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The vast majority of people also believe that aborting a healthy fetus in the third trimester that doesn't pose any known risk to the mother is tantamount to murder.

So what? Theists claim that the majority of people believe in their skydaddy. The vast majority of people believe things that are not so.

… seems to have conceded that the path of least harm is to allow the attending physician to make the decisions for which she formerly required the oversight of an “authority”, meaning legal authority, then morphed into requiring the assent of two doctors. Now her recommendation is consilient with my own, so I see no argument;

My view has not morphed one bit.

Did you not demand 3rd part legal authorization, and also say your position was

THE DOCTOR HAS TO WRITE DOWN THE CONDITION THAT MAKES THE ABORTION MEDICALLY INDICATED IN THE PATIENT'S MEDICAL RECORD

???
Did you forget to include the cops in the all caps “position” you took above, or did you mistakenly require them before?

The cops were never included, Elixir. My view hasn't changed at all from the very beginning. You just keep trying to wedge cops and lawyers into the situation all by yourself.

You say Roe vs Wade but then you keep trying to stick camel noses in. And you keep going after the supposed improper abortions.

 

[Elixir]

some point in the pregnancy - generally the third trimester

For the last time Emily:

“Some point in the pregnancy - generally the third trimester”
is not a rational criterion upon which to base abortion restrictions.

IT’S CAPRICIOUS, SUBJECTIVE AND SUBJECT TO ABUSE.

I suspect that if you could do better, you would have by now. Abortion laws suck.
To support your disagreement you offer “some point in the pregnancy” and pretend you are standing on solid ground rather than on the infinite cloud of points there are in a pregnancy.
The imprecision of your statements reflects the imprecision of your thought process.

you want to mandate some pregnant woman has to put her life in danger

False. Demonstrably false based on my actual stated position and the policy approach that I support.

Demonstrably true, regardless of your stated position: abortion laws kill people.
Maybe they save fetuses too, but that's another question, and remains unanswered.

 

[ZiprHead]

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?

You miss the point. The cited example is doing it without proper understanding. You seem to be operating on a basis that there is no other control besides what the politicians make.

You seem to be laboring under the false assumption that doctors have well-defined standards of practice, a playbook for how to treat everything, and very clear ethical guidelines for every situation.

They don't.

Principles​

I. A physician shall be dedicated to providing competent medical care, with compassion and respect for human dignity and rights.

II. A physician shall uphold the standards of professionalism, be honest in all professional interactions, and strive to report physicians deficient in character or competence, or engaging in fraud or deception, to appropriate entities.

III. A physician shall respect the law and also recognize a responsibility to seek changes in those requirements which are contrary to the best interests of the patient.

IV. A physician shall respect the rights of patients, colleagues, and other health professionals, and shall safeguard patient confidences and privacy within the constraints of the law.

V. A physician shall continue to study, apply, and advance scientific knowledge, maintain a commitment to medical education, make relevant information available to patients, colleagues, and the public, obtain consultation, and use the talents of other health professionals when indicated.

VI. A physician shall, in the provision of appropriate patient care, except in emergencies, be free to choose whom to serve, with whom to associate, and the environment in which to provide medical care.

VII. A physician shall recognize a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health.

VIII. A physician shall, while caring for a patient, regard responsibility to the patient as paramount.

IX. A physician shall support access to medical care for all people.

AMA stated ethics guidelines.

Any physician operating out of those ethics guidelines can be referred to regulatory agencies for discipline including license revocation. Not being a member of the AMA does not excuse you from ethical practices.

You seem to be laboring under the false assumption that doctors have well-defined standards of practice,

See above.

a playbook for how to treat everything,

I get the idea that you wish doctors to be like mechanics with access to the Motor Mechanics database of car repairs. It doesn't work like that.

 

[Elixir]

You seem to be laboring under the false assumption that doctors have well-defined standards of practice,

See above.

Looks one hell of a lot better defined than "some point in the pregnancy".

 

[ZiprHead]

You seem to be laboring under the false assumption that doctors have well-defined standards of practice,

See above.

Looks one hell of a lot better defined than "some point in the pregnancy".

I get the feeling that EL thinks the several years long training of physicians means nothing and they should just follow some cookie cutter procedure and not take specific circumstances at hand into account. They should just be technicians who follow some guideline somewhere.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But we have already squeezed the grape: the AMA and licensing requirements already question doctors whose conduct breaches professional standards of medical ethics.

There are literally no standards of medical ethics that pertain to abortion. Furthermore, a minority of doctors are part of AMA.

There are no codified standards of medical ethics. That doesn't mean there's nothing, just that it represents the general medical opinion that a doctor can't deviate too far from.

 

[Elixir]

They should just be technicians who follow some guideline somewhere.

I was just looking at some of the stuff @excreationist has posted recently... maybe it would be best if we let robots make all the decisions.
They might make the occasional fatal mistake but at least they aren't morally corrupt. Then we could criminalize human health care providers touching patients ever, in any manner, for any reason.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I see nobody arguing for killing viable and healthy fetuses for no good reason. Rather, I see a lot of us who do not trust the politicians with making a medical decision about when said fetus poses a danger.

In other words... I'm not arguing for legalizing murder, I just don't trust politicians to make a decision about what constitutes murder in the first place.

I don't trust the politicians that mandate that a physician try to reimplant a removed ectopic pregnancy.

 

[Bomb#20]

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

Disallowance as an objective? How is that constructive? I would hope for an outcome-based objective instead of disallowance for disallowance’s sake.
(I think I already took down the “solid medical indication” bit.)

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

Making stuff illegal as an objective is downright perverse IMO. Call me crazy but I thought making things illegal NECESSARILY had objectives to diminish whatever behavior is being illegalized.

And you call me a pedant.

I’m SURE that’s what Emily meant, but her choice of phrasing reveals an underlying authoritarian bent.

It really reveals more of an underlying unpedantic bent.

 

[Bomb#20]

Suspicious of what? You think the authors just made up fictional characters?

I have no idea what the authors did. I'm just saying that when I read that it feels very different than reading a typical research paper. It's written at a lower level, it's lacking in details that could have been provided, it's missing the usual disclosures. And it's based entirely on survey results, they never saw the medical records. No smoking guns that I can detect but the whole thing just feels wrong.

Well, it's not a typical research paper -- Kimport is arguing for a conceptual change in how people categorize women's reasons for seeking late abortions, rather than for any specific statistical fact about them like you'd see in a typical research paper. She surely knows her sample size is too small for statistical significance. Considering the constraints of privacy and the stigma attaching to abortion, I imagine getting a large sample would be pretty difficult.

It was about rebutting the pro-punishment definition of "person".

Human? Well, they aren't monkeys.
Life processes? Yup, their body is still alive.
Person? No, former person.

Thus life processes in a human body are not sufficient to define "person". And showing even one thing that does not fit is enough to rebut a definition. (Some classics from the internet that come to mind: 4 legs + sit on it = chair. Or horse. Hair and gives milk = mammal. Or coconut.)

Why the bejesus are you rebutting a definition nobody in the thread proposed and/or relied on? And whatever your reason was, why the bejesus did you use my post as a prop for whatever point you were trying to make? You appear to be trying to score an unearned rhetorical point by smearing my arguments with guilt-by-association with the extremist idiots who claim personhood begins at fertilization.

Incidentally, my definition is not "pro-punishment". It's pro-truth. You also appear to be falling prey to an Appeal to Consequences fallacy.

Appeal to consequences - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I used the term "pro-punishment" because the vast majority of supposedly "pro-life" people change their tune when it's rape. If it were truly about life then rape would be treated the same as any other pregnancy--but the vast, vast majority of those who say they are "pro-life" treat them differently. Hence it's not about life, it's about punishment.

In the first place, why bring that up here, especially with me? All the people here are pro-choice as far as I know; I certainly didn't make any pro-life arguments. What have pro-lifers' stupid opinions and motives got to do with us? It's like we're debating whether the non-uniform density of the earth makes orbits unstable and you start comparing your opponents to flat-earthers.

And in the second place, you know "If it were truly about life then rape would be treated the same as any other pregnancy" is an ad hominem argument, don't you? An ad hominem argument is a fallacy of irrelevance -- it's perfectly possible for a bad person with a bad motive to make a sound argument. If Human+Alive=Person were sound reasoning then embryos would be people whether the guy who points it out wants to punish loose women for sluttery or not. A correct refutation is "You don't think a petri-dishful of Henrietta Lacks's immortal cancer cells is a person, do you?", not "Oh, you just want to supervise sex."

And it is relevant as we were discussing a definition for what should be protected. A proper definition must cover the hard cases, not merely the normal cases.

Do you think "brain-dead guy" is a hard case for a definition I offered?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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?

You miss the point. The cited example is doing it without proper understanding. You seem to be operating on a basis that there is no other control besides what the politicians make.

You seem to be laboring under the false assumption that doctors have well-defined standards of practice, a playbook for how to treat everything, and very clear ethical guidelines for every situation.

They don't.

Revocation of medical licenses tends to happen because doctors break laws. Laws which are made by politicians. Services sometimes get denied because doctors disagree with the patient's desires, but more often they're denied because insurance won't pay for it without clear indication of medical necessity and appropriateness.

Sure, it's not perfect (but it's a lot better than you think it is.) But the politicians are worse. Much, much worse.

 

[Elixir]

State medical boards have the authority to strip doctors of their licenses.
They can revoke or suspend a physician’s license for criminality, but also for serious misconduct, unprofessional behavior, or incompetence that endangers public safety.
No need for cops or politicians causing life-threatening delays in treatment.

 

[laughing dog]

Whether you wish to admit it or not, the reality of your position is that you want to mandate some pregnant woman has to put her life in danger to satisfy your "religious" view about a fetus's personhood.

False. Demonstrably false based on my actual stated position and the policy approach that I support.

Nope. You want to deny abortions in 3rd trimester under certain conditions because you see little difference of “viability” and because of your “location” position. But giving birth ALWAYS present possible life threatening dangers. And your rationale is faith based.

Whether you like it or not, your position is fundamentally no different in basis than a Christian right to lifer. Different religion, but the same underlying disregard for the woman’s agency and well-being.

 

[Elixir]

Different religion, but the same underlying disregard for the woman’s agency and well-being.

Reminds me of Aupy the “atheist Hindu”.
All the trappings except God.
No need for Xtianity to be a “right to lifer”.
Leaving God out doesn’t make it less superstitious.

 

[Jarhyn]

Different religion, but the same underlying disregard for the woman’s agency and well-being.

Reminds me of Aupy the “atheist Hindu”.
All the trappings except God.
No need for Xtianity to be a “right to lifer”.

The underlying issue here is this whole "we are intrinsically obligated to increase the population" mindset.

None of this "men and women are categories of baby making and not wanting baby making equipment is a DiSoRdEr" logic holds together without an intrinsic but pointedly unstated obligation to reproduce.

Fundamentally, I would call this religion in service of reproduction "natalism".

Ultimately systemic natalism is an anti-individualist stance that holds those with the least resources down in poverty.

You can even kind of spot the "opinion in the air, without reasonable foundation" in the nature of the word "disorder", hiding an invented ought as an "is".

But how else would someone make peace with the fact they didn't want to reproduce and were expected to anyway?

 

[Elixir]

You can even kind of spot the "opinion in the air, without reasonable foundation" in the nature of the word "disorder", hiding an invented ought as an "is".

Disorder applies to that which violates some order. In this case, "order" is the drive to reproduce, which historically has overcome all other drives that evolution has embedded within us. Anything that goes against that is literally a disorder. Color me proudly disordered.