Roe v Wade is on deck

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

The right has been jumping on such misuse of statistics in the last few years.

Likewise, people who got the Covid vaccine at the start were more likely to die of Covid.

And there's a pattern between the flu vaccine and dying of the flu. (And that one actually has a grain of truth--the thing is the protection of the flu shot wanes faster than the protection from previous infection. Thus someone who got a flu shot last year is at higher risk from the flu than someone who didn't. Note that this does not address the case of the person who got the flu shot this year. There's no scenario in which the risk goes up from getting your yearly shot, though.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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?

"Saves one" is inherently an emotional argument. And has a very high chance of being a bad idea.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

This is a silly and pedantic argument. Waking up in the morning poses risks in the way you're presenting this. It's absurd to insist on this approach, when the vast majority of deliveries got without a hitch, and of those that have hitches of any sort, an infinitesimal number of them result in the mother's death.

I realize you are desperate to persist in the falsehood that there are no risks to carry to term for healthy women

Bullshit. I've never asserted that there are no risks. On the other hand, appealing to "nothing is perfectly risk free" is a cop out.

to push your proposal, because it masks the truth that you wish to force a woman to face an unwanted risk and pain

There's risk to having an abortion too, but you seem unconcerned about that risk.

in order to satisfy your irrational religious beliefs.

It's not a religious belief. It's a rational balance between two competing beliefs, both for me and for society as a whole. 81% of people in the US think there should be some limitations on abortion, and those nearly all fall into the third trimester - the period in which a fetus delivered prematurely has a pretty good chance of survival, and thus most rational people think that such a fetus should only be killed if there's a really, really good reason.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

How many epsilons are there between “virtually no likelihood” and “pretty much 0% likelihood”?

Why do you think this matters? It jumps from like 10% to 75% in the space of three weeks, and I'm only proposing a reasonable line at the 75% mark. What is the relevance of error range on the low end that isn't being considered?

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

Exactly - and EXPLICITLY - right.

So abnormal “babies” aren’t people. Fascinating.

Oh fucking give it a break. I've been extremely clear about referring to fetuses that are either so damaged that they're extremely unlikely to survive no matter what, or fetuses with severe deleterious conditions that make it likely the baby won't thrive and will have lifelong serious complications.

You can fuck right off with your disingenuous appeal to insinuated strawman.

 

[Emily Lake]

All we have are anecdotes - case studies. You're not going to get hard statistics - there's stigma associated with third trimester abortions no matter what. Furthermore, abortion clinics are pretty reticent to share any stats about their procedures, both for reason of protecting patient privacy and because of ideological positions.

Ah, right wing paranoia about the Medical Deep State. Abortion clinics are hiding statistics because of “ideological positions”??
BULLSHIT.
“Right wing ideologues are hiding the statistical truth about thousands of women who die in hospital parking lots” makes just as much sense, and is more likely, given right wing ideologues’ well documented habit of lying and the evidence that does get through.

In fact - Most states have laws requiring abortion providers to submit data. The completeness and detail of what is reported can differ, but it’s not up to them to choose what is reported. in Texas, the Department of State Health Services was accused by the ACLU of intentionally withholding abortion data for 2014. If “the deep state” (aka democrats, per the felon) was withholding data, we would know that.

Sometimes the obvious, simplest explanation is THE EXPLANATION Emily. It is possible that your convoluted conspiracy invention is just WRONG, and the absence of evidence for your presumed plethora of optional abortions of viable fetuses, is just like the reason for lack of evidence of aliens.
THEY DON’T EXIST.

Occam sez.

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.

Were both fetuses determined to have been viable prior to abortion? If that was the case I’m sure you’d have said so. If not, why are you trying to obfuscate again? And granting whatever your point is, so what? TWO cases?

So the number of deaths due to a denial of abortion is less than deaths during pregnancy or deliver - less than 348 over a three year span.

And that’s without separating number of viable from non- viable fetuses.

68% of the deaths during pregnancy and delivery were NOT avoidable - they'd have happened even if an abortion were available.

“In 2023, there were 669 maternal deaths in the United States, with a maternal mortality rate of 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births”
If 68% were unavoidable, then we can “only” blame abortion laws for killing a maximum of TWO HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN women that year.
But on the plus side, those laws SAVED … uh … what? No stats.
YOUR HARMS/BENEFITS ANALYSIS PRESUMES AT LEAST 214 FETUSES “SAVED” BY ABORTION LAWS IN 2023 ALONE. Despite an utter lack of evidence. And that’s assigning equal value to a fetus and a woman.

You sound a lot like Donald Trump raving about caravans and citing a woman in Marin County who was murdered by a migrant to justify a National Emergency in order to impose authoritarian rule.

Nobody here has taken the extreme position that a zygote is a person from day one

WHY NOT?? It “becomes a fetus” at 8-10 weeks (approx) after conception, just as a fetus “becomes a person” at 20-something (undetermined) weeks according to the view you’d like to impose.
If we’re going to allow fuzzy definitions to predominate our legal landscape, let’s go ahead and give the authoritarians all the rope they need to hang anyone they don’t like, right?

You didn't even bother to actually read my post, did you? It's obvious that you didn't read it, or that you're not capable of comprehending it. You're arguing against invented strawmen left and right, as well as literally ignoring things that were already addressed in my post.

You are not arguing in good faith, and are being blatantly disingenuous.

 

[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.

Your policy approach needlessly creates more liability for doctors, in demanding a second doctor put their nose into it. Once in, their nose is in, they can become liable for everything down the road.

Yup, when you put hurdles you get what we see now: docs unwilling to touch cases that do fall within the "rules" in the fear they will be prosecuted.

Sure sure, and those docs were totally unwilling to touch cases that fell within the rules under RvW... yep, totally.

It's beyond dumb that the only counter-arguments you have to reinstating RvW as an actual federal law... is an appeal to what happens without RvW when several states have complete bans. It's absolutely stupid and completely illogical.

 

[Emily Lake]

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

How about you tell me in your own words exactly how you think RvW was written and enacted, then specify where I'm somehow sticking a camel's nose in beyond RvW?

We did not have a problem with improper third trimester abortions under RvW. Yet you keep asking for increased controls on third trimester abortions anyway.

No, for fucks sake - I'm literally asking for RvW to be reinstated as an actual federal law rather than an interpretation.

You're trying to put a lot of effort into a problem that didn't exist--which implies you're actually trying to do something else. When the doctor expects his decisions in the OR to be second-guessed by people who aren't doctors that's going to make him err on the side of self-protection even when that's not in the patient's interest. We are already seeing non-viable c-sections in place of abortions when that is most certainly not in the patient's interest.

The old approach worked. Your approach has been demonstrated to cause problems. Yet you insist the old ways aren't adequate--which either means blind faith or that you desire those problems.

I'm literally asking for the old approach! The one you say worked - that's exactly what the fuck I want!

You have also given conflicting standards for when a third trimester abortion should be permitted--and completely ignored it when I pointed out that you were giving a standard that permitted abortion for any reason almost to birth.

What are you talking about here?

 

[Emily Lake]

I know it doesn't work like that. That's my point. Some posters have made an appeal to medical standards of practice and ethical guidelines, with the assumption that such ethical principles provide meaningful guidance on when it's appropriate and ethical for a doctor to perform a third trimester abortion and when it's not. The reality is that the ethical principles that are published do not provide any guidance on abortions at all - not a single word. Furthermore, the ethical principles vary from organization to organization - there is no single organization whose ethical principles apply to all doctors - only about 15% of the practicing doctors in the US are part of AMA at all for example.

And beyond that, there are no comprehensive standards of practice for doctors. They don't exist. There is no handbook - thus my point that some posters are laboring under the FALSE IMPRESSION that there are well-defined standards of practice. There are none. None exist with regards to abortion.

What you are refusing to consider is that the standards of practice change over time as things are learned. Thus the details should not be codified!

The standards are you do not deviate too far from standard practice lest you get your license yanked.

What you are missing is that NO STANDARD OF PRACTICE EXISTS related to abortion.

 

[Emily Lake]

No need for cops or politicians causing life-threatening delays in treatment.

For the fifty billionth time... these "life-threatening delays" are a figment of your imagination, and thus a strawman. I suppose if you really enjoy arguing with the voices in your head, go for it. Just stop implying that those voices represent my views or proposals.

Figments that have already killed women.

An unknown, but presumed to be "enough", under complete fucking abortion bans! It's not relevant.

Figments that were killing women long before the current mess. I posted one many years ago--I forget the name of the condition but it was extremely high blood pressure due to pregnancy. There's only one treatment: end the pregnancy. But high blood pressure generally has no symptoms: the chance that she would live to delivery was low, but at no point could you say she was in imminent danger. Medicaid. Medicaid wouldn't pay for an abortion, she couldn't pay. Effectively, a death sentence.

This is irrelevant, and an entirely different problem. It does not serve as a reasonable argument against RvW.

The problem you have identified is that someone else wouldn't pay for the abortion. Not that the woman was denied access to an abortion, only that someone else wouldn't pay. That's an entirely different problem, and one that if we could get past this absurd extremist position that you hold, we could probably fine a reasonable solution to.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

The loophole - one loophole - was that RvW was never a law. It was never actually enacted as federally passed legislature. It was an interpretation - and that interpretation was vulnerable to challenge. As an actual law, it could feasibly still be challenged, but the bar for overturning an actual law is much, much, much harder.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

Stop posting intentionally mischaracterized and inaccurate statements of my view. You know what you're doing, so stop it. Your entire post is bullshit.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

THERE ARE NO BEST PRACTICES REGARDING WHEN IT IS AND IS NOT APPROPRIATE TO PERFORM A THIRD TRIMESTER ABORTION.

 

[Elixir]

What you are missing is that NO STANDARD OF PRACTICE EXISTS related to abortion.

Such bullshit, so much contortion to justify enshrining your superstitious belief into law.
Standards of practice are not rigidly defined, for very good reasons. Satisfying your overweening need for authority figures should not form the basis for criminal laws. Get over yourself.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

You're not though. You're ASSUMING that the rate is far higher - you don't have any stats to back that up. All you have are anecdotes and appeals to slippery slopes and fear.

I did your work for you. Turns out that deaths from denial of abortion are no more than 35.2 in 2022, whereas viable healthy fetuses inside healthy mothers killed by abortion were 71.4.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

Well gee, if mom gets to choose whether or not to kill her baby, why not just let her kill it after it's born too?

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

I think your unevidenced pregnant woman who bled out in the parking lot because she was denied an abortion is potentially made up or lying, and the whole thing makes me think it's not accurate. See, two of us can play the "I don't believe what I don't like" game of cognitive bias.

On the other hand... the review I referenced was 1) published in a peer-reviewed journal and 2) is pro-choice. You have no good reason to reject it except cognitive bias.

 

[Emily Lake]

I love how I posted both comprehensive logical arguments AND did you guys' research for you... and you're all just going to pretend like it doesn't exist and ignore it.

At the end of the day, you're just wrong, and you're making an argument that is entirely an appeal to emotion, built on strawmen, and unsupported by actual evidence or logic.

 

[Emily Lake]

What you are missing is that NO STANDARD OF PRACTICE EXISTS related to abortion.

Such bullshit, so much contortion to justify enshrining your superstitious belief into law.
Standards of practice are not rigidly defined, for very good reasons. Satisfying your overweening need for authority figures should not form the basis for criminal laws. Get over yourself.

They don't need to be rigidly defined. They do have to actually exist.

None exists. There is none that pertains to, or is even rationally applicable to, when a third trimester abortion should or should not be performed by a doctor.

You keep appealing to something that you imagine must exist, and well if it doesn't exist there must be something that kinda sorta maybe fits, and well if there isn't it doesn't matter because no doctor would do it anyway because it's unethical, and if it's not actually unethical well they still won't do it because made up reasons followed by insults.

 

[Elixir]

They do have to actually exist.

Why? To prevent figments of your ever-so-caring imagination?

You keep appealing to something that you imagine must exist

You have me confused with Emily Lake, who is plagued by tortured conjurings of corrupt doctors and insane pregnant women conspiring to commit genocide against legions of healthy viable fetuses.
Get help, Emily.