Roe v Wade is on deck

[Loren Pechtel]

I’m reconsidering the how common corruption is among medical professionals, in light of the fact that The Felon’s personal “physician” has declined to have him carted off to the looney bin.
Is this the same one (I hope) who declared he would live to be 200?

He's clearly going against proper medical practice but nobody's going to prosecute.

Besides, they don't go after minor things like this. The boards aren't going to act unless someone is hurt or put at high risk.

 

[thebeave]

If a rape victim realizes she is pregnant in the 3rd trimester, you would not permit her to have an abortion? After all, we don't kill persons because of their parent's behavior.

The means of conception has no bearing on the nature of the fetus. The only legitimate reason for the state to prohibit an abortion is to protect the fetus. Thus rape and incest should have no bearing on abortion laws. To consider them relevant is to admit it's about punishing the woman.

My two cents. The exceptions for late term pregancy abortions are for when the woman's health is endangered. This generally is assumed to include endangering the mental health of the woman as well. Rape and incest are traumatic events and many women would consider giving birth to their rapist's or relative's child to be unbearable. So, the exception is made, just like we make exceptions under the guise of self defense, justifiable homicide, etc. Its a case of having to choose between two uncomfortable, bad choices. I don't know where you come up with this "punishing the woman" nonsense. A very large percentage of women are against third trimester abortions. Are all these women self hating and/or sadomasochistic?

I do wonder though, how many third trimester abortions are from a rape pregnancy. I would imagine very, very few. I think most rape victims, given a chance, would get an abortion as early as possible as as to not be reminded about it on a daily basis, and help get quick closure on the event.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've addressed the harms and benefits.

If by “addressed” you mean dismissed, yeah.
Try this easy quiz:

Do you believe laws should be made on the basis of

A: providing more benefit to people than it does harm to them, or

B: on emotional appeals to vagaries like “personhood” or “decency”

For all your complaints and claims to “having addressed”

I think laws should be made on the basis of A. I also think that third trimester fetuses are people for all intents and purposes, and thus the harm to them should be considered.

The problem here is "considered" is a weasel--you can't have a democracy of two.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Wow! You guys have been arguing about this for 4 years! Has anyone ever changed their mind? I don't have enough time to waste to read all 242 pages of posts.

The argument may have shifted.

We now have a number of people who are stridently arguing AGAINST Roe v Wade.

Interesting times.

We have people who are arguing that RvW turned out to have loopholes that the Gilead crowd could use to circumvent it.

 

[laughing dog]

If a rape victim realizes she is pregnant in the 3rd trimester, you would not permit her to have an abortion? After all, we don't kill persons because of their parent's behavior.

The means of conception has no bearing on the nature of the fetus. The only legitimate reason for the state to prohibit an abortion is to protect the fetus. Thus rape and incest should have no bearing on abortion laws. To consider them relevant is to admit it's about punishing the woman.

My two cents. The exceptions for late term pregancy abortions are for when the woman's health is endangered. This generally is assumed to include endangering the mental health of the woman as well. Rape and incest are traumatic events and many women would consider giving birth to their rapist's or relative's child to be unbearable. So, the exception is made, just like we make exceptions under the guise of self defense, justifiable homicide, etc. Its a case of having to choose between two uncomfortable, bad choices. I don't know where you come up with this "punishing the woman" nonsense. A very large percentage of women are against third trimester abortions. Are all these women self hating and/or sadomasochistic?

Irrelevant. Those women can choose to carry to term if they find themselves in those situations. Why should they get to dictate available medical options for others?

Making someone undergo a painful unwanted medical procedure that also poses serious health risks sounds like punishment.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It absolutely sounds reprehensible to me. Killing a health baby who presents no known risk to the mother …

There is no such thing. All deliveries pose known risks. The risks may be small, but they are known to be possible.

Aren't there risks in aborttions as well? Particularly, 3rd term?

I do not know risk numbers for late abortion--but note that they're only being done if something is seriously wrong.

Early abortion, the numbers have been consistent: it's approximately 10x safer than an uncomplicated delivery even as the total risk of both has declined considerably.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It absolutely sounds reprehensible to me. Killing a health baby who presents no known risk to the mother …

There is no such thing. All deliveries pose known risks. The risks may be small, but they are known to be possible.

Aren't there risks in aborttions as well? Particularly, 3rd term?

Yes. But no one is arguing that someone must take that risk.

There are ony two choices. If the baby is unwanted, and its 3rd trimester you can abort or carry to term. You must assume one of these two risks, regardless.

From my brief search, the risks are not that far apart. They are within the same order of magnitude.

Maternal mortality in 3rd trimester abortions: 77 per 100,00 in 2023
Maternal mortality from giving birth at full term: 19 per 100,00 in 2023

So, its apparently safer to the mother to give birth, than have a 3rd trimester abortion.

Apples and oranges--that third trimester abortion is from the set of pregnancies where something has gone seriously wrong.

 

[Elixir]

I do not know risk numbers for late abortion--but note that they're only being done if something is seriously wrong.

Ems don’t care. She is convinced that there is a hidden epidemic of corrupt doctors and insane patients conspiring to kill legions of viable fetuses, and nothing you say will convince her that’s it’s not worth killing a lot of women to try to prevent something that’s not happening as frequently as women are being killed.
Since Emily is incapable of looking at it through the lens of “what outcome will be produced by a law forbidding x” I consider her advice on laws to be 100% emotional fluff and an endorsement of harms to society and its citizens. Virtue signaling an urgency to prevent imaginary harm.

IOW she’s a complete waste of time unless you’re inclined to accept the old trope “if it only saves one fetus, wouldn’t it be worth it?”
NO, IT WOULD NOT BE WORTH IT.
Emily is becoming a bore.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You're literally comparing ectopic and stillbirth pregnancies to healthy ones capturing the inevitable deaths from an already horrific situation along with the avoidable ones.

Ectopic pregnancies do not get to the third trimester. Ever, afaik. The mom is dead by then if the fetus has not been removed.

Fair enough. But my point still stands that it's the dangerous situations that ever end up looking at a third trimester abortion. You would really need to compare cases with the same situations and that just won't happen.

In the vanishing and vast majority of those 77/100k cases, the doctor looked at the situation and said "this is less risky, to abort".

Also, you would really have to make a representative selection from all third trimester delivery events, including third trimester stillbirts, and it would be pretty correct to exclude or separate all deaths during an induced delivery/abortion of a nonviable pregnancy when the body itself fails to go into labor to pass the dying/dead fetus even when it ought.

I expect the statistics would look quite different, but I doubt there is enough of a population to really measure there, when it comes to third trimester abortions. Also, how would you possibly ethically collect information for women forced to carry those nonviable pregnancies to term or stillbirth?

Unfortunately, we now have a data set for this. Not that we have good data as they are no longer collating the data. It's been enough that we've seen the stillbirth rate go up.

What is the death rate for women forced to carry a dead corpse in their body which it does not eject? What is the death rate for women whose babies are essentially a giant toxic tumor growth slowly killing them?

I honestly don't ever want to find out.

I hope that data cannot ever be collected.

It will be collected in "The Southern US and beyond" quite soon, I imagine.

I think we already know the answer to both of these: basically 100%.

 

[Elixir]

Maternal mortality in 3rd trimester abortions: 77 per 100,00 in 2023
Maternal mortality from giving birth at full term: 19 per 100,00 in 2023

So, its apparently safer to the mother to give birth, than have a 3rd trimester abortion.

Apples and oranges--that third trimester abortion is from the set of pregnancies where something has gone seriously wrong.

That is the second time that particular fallacy has been pointed out. Similar to statistics proving that you should never ever go to a hospital because so many people die there.

 

[Toni]

Only if you accept that a fetus in the third trimester is someone.

Is a 30 week delivered fetus someone?

Once delivered, it is a baby. This is not difficult to understand.

So location is what makes a human entity a person versus a nonperson?

Once delivered, it is separate from its mother and no longer dependent upon her heart, her lungs, her kidneys, her blood and breath and all of her organs to live.

Until then, the needs of the mother are primary and the needs of the fetus are secondary.

So delivery it and separate it from the mother.

So you propose that legislators, who have demonstrated quite explicitly just how ignorant they are about biology, pregnancy, women’s bodies, and rape should dictate to a woman what medical procedures she must or cannot have, because she is pregnant?

No, and I'm getting really tired of these dumbass interpretations.

But hey, let's go ahead and dive in on your riposte.

You want to complain that legislators - by which you clearly mean republican legislators - are totally ignorant about women's bodies and biology, so they shouldn't be allowed to dictate to women what we can and cannot do with respect to other living beings inside of us. Okay fine. But once they're separated from us, by your own logic, those other beings are persons who have the right to not be murdered.

The only difference is location: Whether the 30wk safe being is inside a womb or outside a womb. If that 30wk safe being is delivered prematurely, it's a person - and it merits protection to keep it from harm. If that 30wk safe being hasn't been prematurely delivered, it has no personhood and can be treated as a parasite and eliminated at will. So deliver it. The mother doesn't have to keep it, she doesn't even have to see it. But since it's unacceptable to you to limit abortions for viable fetuses, then make it not a fetus - make it a baby. Induce delivery and remove it from the mother. Now it's an independent human. Problem solved. If mom decides in the third trimester that she doesn't want to have a baby, she doesn't have to be responsible for that baby - she can deliver it prematurely and let medical staff deal with its life and place it for adoption.

On the other hand... you also have a pile of predominantly democrats who are so ignorant of biology and women's bodies that they want to force women to compete against males in athletics, they want to force women to share prison cells with males, and share intimate spaces with males against our will or consent. I'd be quite happy if you would speak up against that legislative ignorance in addition to your insistence that near-term infants can be killed on demand.

I definitely do not believe that ignorance of science, biology, anatomy, particularly female anatomy, pregnancy, developmental biology or ethics follow any political leanings. At all.

I do not understand WHY it is that you do not believe that medical professionals and women can make appropriate decisions about their reproductive lives without the legislative efforts of those who not only have no particular expertise but in fact are as likely to be ignorant and ill informed as anyone you stop on a street corner and ask.

I know enough medical professionals to know that a big part of the job involves keeping up to date on the latest information and best practices and that legislators do not have the time to do the same and yet all of us have opinions about what certain people can and cannot do with their own bodies.

I believe I’m somewhat older than you so I well remember the days before Title IX and know that there are still inequities with how female athletes of all ages and their sports are treated compared with male athletes. I am not entirely easy about trans athletes participating in female sports but I am finding that my concerns are largely unfounded.

It’s been about 30 years since I knew a child, quite well in fact, who made me realize that in fact some people truly do not have external sex characteristics that match with their self perception and self knowledge. And I have some increasing understanding of just how difficult it is for such individuals to feel as though they belong in this world. In fact, most cis female athletes do not object to having trans teammates or competitors. Some do but frankly I’ve watched youth sports where some teammates objected to players of a different race and yes, who objected to a cis female player on their team, mostly because she was better than most of her teammates. And as I sat on the sidelines and had confirmed for me exactly where those little darlings learned their attitudes. I was happy for the talented female athlete who, a generation before would likely never have been allowed in a ‘boys’ youth team and probably not a girls’ team because so few existed. Instead, she got to compete with her peers in terms of talent, skill and ability. So why not learn to be proud of any team that welcomes all? I’m not perfect but I know that and I’m trying to learn more so that my beliefs can be supported by facts, not fears.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It absolutely sounds reprehensible to me. Killing a health baby who presents no known risk to the mother …

There is no such thing. All deliveries pose known risks. The risks may be small, but they are known to be possible.

Aren't there risks in aborttions as well? Particularly, 3rd term?

Yes. But no one is arguing that someone must take that risk.

There are ony two choices. If the baby is unwanted, and its 3rd trimester you can abort or carry to term. You must assume one of these two risks, regardless.

From my brief search, the risks are not that far apart. They are within the same order of magnitude.

Maternal mortality in 3rd trimester abortions: 77 per 100,00 in 2023
Maternal mortality from giving birth at full term: 19 per 100,00 in 2023

So, its apparently safer to the mother to give birth, than have a 3rd trimester abortion.

The problem here: third trimester abortions happen when things are abnormal.

Full term births happen when things are normal.

There is absolutely going to be a selection bias because the risk pools aren't even the same beforehand.

You could have asked someone more statistics-literate but you didn't.

You would have to control the initial selection population by the exact disorders/conditions and situations that occurred specifically in the pool of 3rd trimester abortions.

You're comparing situations that have already gone sideways in some way to a population almost exclusively populated by nominal situations. Of course the situations that were so sideways they required an abortion were more fatal on average... And third trimester abortions simply do not happen with healthy fetuses, let alone in high enough numbers to compare the control group.

You're literally comparing ectopic and stillbirth pregnancies to healthy ones capturing the inevitable deaths from an already horrific situation along with the avoidable ones.

But, the discussion here and now is focused on elective third trimester abortions, when both mother and fetus/baby are healthy. If the fetus is abnormal, I don't think Emily, myself or anyone else here is insisting it be carried to term.

But who here is asking for third trimester abortions when nothing's wrong? Nobody. It's not that we want to see such cases, it's that we are balancing the risk of (doctor performs unethical abortion) vs (politician blocks doctor from performing a needed abortion) and concluding that the error rate in the second case is far higher and thus the overall outcome will be improved by shifting this balance away from the politicians.

In the real world rules always come with a cost and that cost needs to be considered in deciding if it's a good rule. And in the real world zero bad outcomes simply doesn't happen, you need to decide where the optimum point is.

 

[Toni]

It absolutely sounds reprehensible to me. Killing a health baby who presents no known risk to the mother …

There is no such thing. All deliveries pose known risks. The risks may be small, but they are known to be possible.

Aren't there risks in aborttions as well? Particularly, 3rd term?

Yes. But no one is arguing that someone must take that risk.

There are ony two choices. If the baby is unwanted, and its 3rd trimester you can abort or carry to term. You must assume one of these two risks, regardless.

From my brief search, the risks are not that far apart. They are within the same order of magnitude.

Maternal mortality in 3rd trimester abortions: 77 per 100,00 in 2023
Maternal mortality from giving birth at full term: 19 per 100,00 in 2023

So, its apparently safer to the mother to give birth, than have a 3rd trimester abortion.

Those raw statistics do not reflect the circumstances under which a woman would undergo a third trimester abortion. It is quite rare —fewer than 1% of all abortions are performed at or after 24 weeks of gestation. Just over 1 million abortions were performed in 2023, meaning that approximately 10,000 of the abortions performed occurred in the third trimester. So, 7 or 8 women died during or after the procedure. There is no information contained in those stats that indicate exactly why those women sought abortions. There were just under 3.6 million births occurred in 2023. Six hundred and sixty nine women died of maternal complications during pregnancy, childbirth or after childbirth in the US in 2023.

What we should be doing as a nation is to make it easier to obtain medical care and other needed support for all who are are pregnant.

 

[laughing dog]

It absolutely sounds reprehensible to me. Killing a health baby who presents no known risk to the mother …

There is no such thing. All deliveries pose known risks. The risks may be small, but they are known to be possible.

Aren't there risks in aborttions as well? Particularly, 3rd term?

Yes. But no one is arguing that someone must take that risk.

There are ony two choices. If the baby is unwanted, and its 3rd trimester you can abort or carry to term. You must assume one of these two risks, regardless.

From my brief search, the risks are not that far apart. They are within the same order of magnitude.

Maternal mortality in 3rd trimester abortions: 77 per 100,00 in 2023
Maternal mortality from giving birth at full term: 19 per 100,00 in 2023

So, its apparently safer to the mother to give birth, than have a 3rd trimester abortion.

Ignoring the apples and oranges measurement issue that others have mentioned, the point is that the MOTHER should get to choose which risk she wishes to bear, not anyone else.

 

[Jarhyn]

It absolutely sounds reprehensible to me. Killing a health baby who presents no known risk to the mother …

There is no such thing. All deliveries pose known risks. The risks may be small, but they are known to be possible.

Aren't there risks in aborttions as well? Particularly, 3rd term?

Yes. But no one is arguing that someone must take that risk.

There are ony two choices. If the baby is unwanted, and its 3rd trimester you can abort or carry to term. You must assume one of these two risks, regardless.

From my brief search, the risks are not that far apart. They are within the same order of magnitude.

Maternal mortality in 3rd trimester abortions: 77 per 100,00 in 2023
Maternal mortality from giving birth at full term: 19 per 100,00 in 2023

So, its apparently safer to the mother to give birth, than have a 3rd trimester abortion.

The problem here: third trimester abortions happen when things are abnormal.

Full term births happen when things are normal.

There is absolutely going to be a selection bias because the risk pools aren't even the same beforehand.

You could have asked someone more statistics-literate but you didn't.

You would have to control the initial selection population by the exact disorders/conditions and situations that occurred specifically in the pool of 3rd trimester abortions.

You're comparing situations that have already gone sideways in some way to a population almost exclusively populated by nominal situations. Of course the situations that were so sideways they required an abortion were more fatal on average... And third trimester abortions simply do not happen with healthy fetuses, let alone in high enough numbers to compare the control group.

You're literally comparing ectopic and stillbirth pregnancies to healthy ones capturing the inevitable deaths from an already horrific situation along with the avoidable ones.

But, the discussion here and now is focused on elective third trimester abortions, when both mother and fetus/baby are healthy. If the fetus is abnormal, I don't think Emily, myself or anyone else here is insisting it be carried to term.

But who here is asking for third trimester abortions when nothing's wrong? Nobody. It's not that we want to see such cases, it's that we are balancing the risk of (doctor performs unethical abortion) vs (politician blocks doctor from performing a needed abortion) and concluding that the error rate in the second case is far higher and thus the overall outcome will be improved by shifting this balance away from the politicians.

In the real world rules always come with a cost and that cost needs to be considered in deciding if it's a good rule. And in the real world zero bad outcomes simply doesn't happen, you need to decide where the optimum point is.

Republican mistresses.

Good Christian Girls™ who just made a Mistake™.

I would call these convenience abortions usually pushed on women by men.

Usually they happen in the first trimester, and honestly I find them kind of disgusting. I'm sure that wealth has made the world see such as these.

I imagine money has opened forbidden doors in the past, and I imagine at times it wasn't even very much money all told.

It's hard to imagine how disgusting people can be, if they can run people over in the streets, or send followers to shoot up events, or be the follower that does the shooting.

Or be sent by a cult leader to torture someone to death.

Let's not forget what world we live in.

But still, these are the sorts of things that we have medical boards and oaths and reviews to keep out of our medical infrastructure.

This is the sort of thing that would normally require presentation before the board were such a procedure to be performed. The only time it wouldn't be is if it were "under the table". The only time that happens is when it's illegal/difficult to get an earlier abortion, the person getting it done is someone ashamed and wealthy enough to pay, or both.

The problem is that making sure it cannot happen here means making a lot of other deaths happen in exchange.

™re: Affluenza.

 

[Elixir]

In the real world rules always come with a cost and that cost needs to be considered in deciding if it's a good rule.

B-b-b-but if it only saves one fetus, wouldn’t it be worth it?

We have at least one “yes” vote …
Can we get another?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The person whose behavior you seek to constrain isn’t just rare, they’re virtually nonexistent. Yet abortion laws cause pain and suffering and even death, and that’s an inevitable cost of legislating reproductive healthcare.

If the laws I propose only impact a virtually nonexistent number of people, why are you so dead set against them?

You have it bass-ackwards here.

The laws you propose only save a virtually nonexistent number of people. The number they kill is decidedly not nonexistent.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nobody here has taken the extreme position that a zygote is a person from day one - we all recognize that as an extreme and irrational position.

“We” do??
What changes between conception and week 20-whatever that is your magic “bar of personhood”?

75% likelihood to survive outside the womb at 27 weeks, versus virtually no likelihood to survive prior to 24 weeks, and pretty much 0% likelihood to survive prior to 20 weeks.

75% likely to "survive" but very likely with serious damage.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But let's talk numbers. Let's do it. I provided at least 2 out of 28 women who were willing to be surveyed about their third trimester abortions had one because they hadn't known they were pregnant. I feel empathy for being in that situation when you didn't plan to be a mom, but the fact remains that there was no identified or suspected risk to the mother's health or life, and there was no known or suspected deformity or deleterious condition of the fetus. In short, it was a healthy fetus, in a healthy mother. This is the scenario that you have dismissed as being virtually nonexistent to an extent that you assert that it does less harm than the number of women who die because they were denied an abortion.

You keep referring to that one "study". It doesn't read like proper research. It has no check for somebody lying, including the researchers. The whole thing makes me think it's not accurate.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm not experienced in medical coding.

We already have plenty of procedures that have no indication other than patient request. S

“Indication” is right at the top of the report form. There are codes for procedures and codes for different reasons for the same procedure, and insurance may cover the same procedure differently (usually due a difference in anesthesia and other ancillary costs) depending upon the reason.
This applies even to non-invasive procedures. Emily’s insistence that laws will somehow end up benefiting fetuses is totally fabricated from emotional cloth.
It makes no sense at the end of the day, not in theory nor IRL. Emily is blowing smoke. It’s the personhood pig again, with lotsa lipstick.

What I posted was the code for an elective abortion.