Roe v Wade is on deck

[Jimmy Higgins]

RvW but… as an actual federal law.

Yep, totally a problem with my view.

So much this.
I personally think that lots of ugly behavior gets covered up by aborting the evidence. Nevertheless, the worst problem with RvW is that it's not law. I really wish it had been made federal law 20 years ago.
Tom

I want to be grateful that the Respect for Marriage Act passed when it did, but the fact that they didn't use that legislative window to protect the rights of American women as well makes me feel a little gross. Like when a bad parent rewards the good kids to punish the naughty one. Apparently we were the more palatable minority that month? Maybe the powers that be were already planning ahead to jettison trans folks from LGB protections, and that was the opening bribe...

I think it was less about who, but what. Dems pass the ACA and get crucified in the mid-terms. Imagine what would have happened with protecting abortion rights... when it wasn't even necessary to do because it was the law of the land because SCOTUS said so. Passing the act wouldn't have changed anything. Just added what SCOTUS would have needed to shred later.

Respectfully, I disagree. While it is true that conservatives are not cowed by the prospect of shredding any law or principle, I think this very month's docket demonstrated just how much easier it is to shred legislation from the bench versus levislation by Congress.

Voting Rights Act on line four for you.

And we the public should prefer to be governed primarily by the legislative branch anyway.

Well heck yeah. Having the Government do the right thing would be awesome. But the inertia for that is slower than the courts. Besides, any abortion law would have been tested in court anyway. In fact, in not provoking a case, not passing legislation could have helped it last a little bit longer.

 

[Jarhyn]

You ASSUMING that survey respondents are lying

No, I'm assuming that we cannot guarantee they are telling the truth. A lack of trust is different from a trust of lack.

Did you even bother...

I can infer from the structure of the study, the known issues with that format, and the well-understood consequences of how certain conclusions cannot be reached or supported from such positions.

From there, I reject specifically any such conclusions.

Because these include most conclusions, and because these are the conclusions you are attempting to reach, the study in this context is "unscientific trash".

Spoiler: Off-topic and why is it being brought back in when it was already split to its own thread just a day or two ago?

And as has been discussed, sex in mammals is a bunch of different traits, some of which are nonbinary, and which seem to like to hide together in trenchcoats.

In data science terms, that's more like a data structure composed of enumerations, integers, and floating point values. It's about as far from binary as can be

 

[Arctish]

let's give the competitive "elective" definition a rest, hmm?

I’d favor abolishing it altogether. Its only common use outside of its legitimate medical meaning, is to portray women who have abortions as baby killers.

In the event that a healthy woman 30 weeks pregnant decides to terminate her heathy fetus, I absolutely consider her a baby killer.

On the other hand, if there’s a medical risk to her, or if the developing baby is materially unhealthy, I consider that a tragedy.

Terminate her healthy fetus, or terminate her pregnancy?

Those are two very different things.

Terminating a fetus means the fetus dies. Terminating a pregnancy means the fetus is delivered at whatever stage of development it's at, pre-term or full term.

Suppose a 30 weeks pregnant woman is showing signs of sleep deprivation caused by pregnancy related insomnia and she wants a doctor to induce labor. Suppose initial treatment doesn't help and the insomnia persists. If a doctor agrees that premature delivery is safer for her and her fetus than waiting around a few more weeks and seeing what happens, are you going to call it an attempted murder if they go with the early delivery plan?

 

[Elixir]

If a doctor agrees that premature delivery is safer for her and her fetus than waiting around a few more weeks and seeing what happens, are you going to call it an attempted murder if they go with the early delivery plan?

I don’t think there are many posters here who would say that’s murder, or claim qualification to make such a judgment based on those few words.
Obviously it needs an urgently convened meeting of specially licensed practitioners in related specialties, to hear arguments and render a proper verdict.

 

[Toni]

You ASSUMING that survey respondents are lying

No, I'm assuming that we cannot guarantee they are telling the truth. A lack of trust is different from a trust of lack.

Did you even bother...

I can infer from the structure of the study, the known issues with that format, and the well-understood consequences of how certain conclusions cannot be reached or supported from such positions.

From there, I reject specifically any such conclusions.

Because these include most conclusions, and because these are the conclusions you are attempting to reach, the study in this context is "unscientific trash".

Spoiler: Off-topic and why is it being brought back in when it was already split to its own thread just a day or two ago?

And as has been discussed, sex in mammals is a bunch of different traits, some of which are nonbinary, and which seem to like to hide together in trenchcoats.

In data science terms, that's more like a data structure composed of enumerations, integers, and floating point values. It's about as far from binary as can be

You can ever guarantee that any survey respondents are responding honestly.

The study in question was not made up of data compiled from surveys. It was done drawing from interviews with women who agreed to discuss an impossibly difficult situation that they faced.

Sure, it's possible that they lied. That's what women do, right? They lie about being raped, they lie about who the baby daddy is, they lie about how much their rent is, t hey lie about birth control and they respond to a request from a researcher who is seeking to learn more information from women about why they had late term abortions, because that's an experience that every woman wants to relive, embellish and expand upon, making it up as she goes because she happily murdered the baby that she carried for 4 or 5 or 6 months, and woke up one morning and said Nah, not feeling it.

I'm pretty certain that you are not a researcher in any social science so I have linked for you a description of using interviews for research:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394279802_Methods_of_Data_Collection_in_Qualitative_Research_Interviews_Focus_Groups_Observations_and_Document_Analysis

Interviews in qualitative research
Interviews are one of the most widely used methods for data collection in qualitative research.
This enables researchers to explore the perspectives, experiences, and meanings of participants in
depth. Unlike structured surveys or questionnaires, qualitative interviews are flexible, allowing
researchers to probe more deeply into topics that arise during conversations [3,4]. According
to Roulston (2010) [16], interviews serve as a bridge between researchers and participants,
offering insights into how individuals construct their understanding of the world. By engaging
in dialogue, researchers can gather rich descriptive data that contributes to the study of human
behaviour, beliefs, and social interactions

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think that the term elective is used appropriately for medical purposes by the medical community. Abortions are either natural ( what we call miscarriage) or scheduled.

My sister got knocked up by a dumbass. They were using the "rhythm method". She called an abortion clinic and two hours later left the clinic pregnancy free. He, she, and the baby were all healthy. The parents killed their baby because they didn't want to be responsible for a child.
But the abortion was not scheduled, she just walked in, he paid, and it was over. It was an elective abortion. As opposed to my mom's, where a medical disaster was dealt with the next day. But by medical jargon standards that was the elective abortion, but my sister's was not.
Tom

So you want to punish the slut?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think that the term elective is used appropriately for medical purposes by the medical community. Abortions are either natural ( what we call miscarriage) or scheduled.

My sister got knocked up by a dumbass. They were using the "rhythm method". She called an abortion clinic and two hours later left the clinic pregnancy free. He, she, and the baby were all healthy. The parents killed their baby because they didn't want to be responsible for a child.
But the abortion was not scheduled, she just walked in, he paid, and it was over. It was an elective abortion. As opposed to my mom's, where a medical disaster was dealt with the next day. But by medical jargon standards that was the elective abortion, but my sister's was not.
Tom

No. Your sister’s abortion was an elective abortion under medical terminology. It wasn’t an emergency.

No, not according to someone on this thread. Her abortion was not scheduled, therefore it was not elective.
I think that the medical jargon is important to medicos, but it is not the vernacular that most of us use.
Tom

Scheduled doesn't exclude scheduled for now.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Sodas didn't "go" from Diet to Zero. A new product was offered, deliberately engineered to taste more like a sugary soda than a traditional diet soda did, to get people to drink it who didn't like how diet sodas taste. It has a different name so people will be able to buy the one they want.

Different sweetener, same idea.

As for gay marriage, in the first place, the two polls were by two different organizations with different sampling methods, so it's not clear the difference in question wording is even what made the difference. And in the second place, you're taking for granted that the two questions actually mean the same thing. They don't. "allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally" isn't at all equivalent to "it should be legal or illegal for gay and lesbian couples to get married". They have completely different implications for what should happen to any people who try it. If they can't marry legally it implies when they've done it they still don't have a legal marriage. But if it's illegal for them to marry it implies when they've done it they can be fined or jailed. So of course any respondents who don't want the state to recognize gay marriages but don't want gays punished for it are going to give different answers.

I find it hard to comprehend why there is any substantial difference between the two questions. This is a case where you simply can't do the illegal--submit a same-sex marriage certificate when it's not legal and it's going to be rejected. You have the ceremony but not the legal status.

Yes, they probably do happen. They also probably don't occur enough to warrant interfering with a woman who needs desperate health care, not physicians calling the hospital lawyers.

Thank you. That is a substantive argument. Do that, instead of peddling misleading distractions about "elective".

"Elective" is relevant as the pro-punishment crowd is using it deceptively. Even the questionable research doesn't make she-wanted-it more than a small percentage of the total.

The term "elective" is very much used to provide the illusion that these procedures to save the life of the woman are merely a choice. You might want to give it a rest, but it is used negatively like that.

Quote someone on this board using it that way. If some stupid Republican politician uses it that way, so what? Throwing that in the face of anyone here is just more strawmanning.

Look at those two(???) "studies" (I find them about as fishy as a tuna boat) Emily posted. Both attempting to show some third trimester abortions are merely a choice.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1363/psrh.12190

The author interviewed 28 women who had obtained late-term abortions and she reported their reasons. Developmental defects were the most common reason, certainly, but not the only reason. Some of the women hadn't aborted earlier because of difficulty raising the money for it or because of other obstacles our society put in their paths; and, perhaps surprisingly, some of the women hadn't aborted earlier because they didn't know they were pregnant.
...

I was expecting this to be the same research that Emily previously linked that I said didn't feel like proper research. Nope, this isn't that study--or is it? Methodology sounds just like the other one (really, now, your best way of finding information is interviewing people you don't even have evidence actually had an abortion? They start out with distributing fliers to women who got an abortion, but also then distributed them by many other channels), this one is devoid of any sort of table and feels even fishier than the previous one.

Also, digging to see what I could learn I find the organization that provided the grant was funded by Buffet. But the year this was published is the last year that group operated. Buffet isn't funding them anymore.

And once again the Loren unfalsifiability engine shifts into high gear.

Why do I find this whole saga extremely suspect?

Easy-peasy: because someone in a position to know of what she speaks said something that conflicts with your premises and therefore must have been lying.

I explained why I find it fishy.

With the ready access to a lot of scientific papers the internet provides we increasingly see "scientific" papers that are nothing of the sort. Lower reading level, especially with regard to the jargon of the field, much less data and math, often lacking p-values. Written for the lay person, not for someone who is reading something in their domain.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, that's the thing: having to line up during primetime hours to get punched in the face whole a comedic clip of both the original statement and the rebuttal + warning of consequences for repetitive lying would almost guarantee that they lose the election.

Nobody in the GOP wants to vote for a little bitch who gets punched on. That shit is straight up kryptonite for Men.

Clear evidence of the truth being silenced.

(Never mind that the idea of silencing any large thing is effectively zero. Details can be hidden, not the things. Russia knows exactly where every one of our spy satellites is at all times. Exactly how good they are is another matter, although the Hubble is basically a repurposed spy satellite so we know they're at least that good.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem is that there's no actual measurements in the study, and no way to validate any of it.

The "study" is just straight up unscientific trash.

I've heard a lot of stories in my life, true and false and everything in between.

I've met a LOT of "Liars for Jesus", too, and women who would as much lie about these sorts of things, ESPECIALLY if they thought it would "save the children".

I'm going to file this right in the circular file where it belongs, not because I believe that late term abortions don't happen at all (they do, very rarely) or that every story there is a lie, but because I think that some scattered unconfirmed anecdotes fail to establish even veracity let alone precedence. That it is unscientific trash.

The study relies on personal narratives. It is not a study in physics or chemistry or statistics.

Personal narratives are not scientific studies.

There is no control.

No need for one.

There are interviews with women who. Describe their experiences.

We read about people describing their experiences all the time and don’t call it trash.

We are not calling their experiences "trash". We are calling the "research" trash.

The study does not pretend to be anything other than what it was: narratives by individuals who all had a similar life event.

It purports to be about why women had third trimester abortions.

You answer that with numbers, not with personal accounts.

I suppose that these narratives could be confirmed if the women offered their medical records up. Do you suppose the homeless woman had access ito her medical records? Do you suppose the woman whose doctors kept lying to her about the severity of the abnormalities of her fetus has access to accurate medical records?

Did you not notice that nothing in the study design ensured that they were actually talking to someone who had a third trimester abortion, let alone whether what she said matches up with reality.

It would have been trivial for outside actors to contaminate the data.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I fact-checked with Advanced Search and found every recent use of "elective" by Emily

The problem here (and I DO blame this on direct dishonesty) is that Emily doesn't use the word elective, she uses the words "on-demand".

On-demand is the next stage of the conflation, that happens after the "elective" has already been made to jump the track. She implies the false connection while cleverly not saying the word that the misconceptopm arose around.

Of course, it's still taking the false data or supporting it with notions built around the false interpretation but it cleverly avoids a direct association with the original liars.

The problem for her is that the only way to get to the perception of it is to either do as we have been discussing and relying on unscientific trash 'studies' in a format that can push any line, or the conflation between "elective" and on-demand.

There might be a third way some fool or idiot or liar-for-jesus comes to repeat such trash, but it will be adjacent to the last two because Bomb, at least has already admitted that statistically, these events don't actually happen except as a function of the rule of large numbers and has entirely failed to stop making the claim that something needs to be done about them. Will he stop making the claim though? Nope.

Neither Bomb nor Emily wrote the article lined above. The article,
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health
Volume 54, Issue 2 pp. 38-45 was then published in Wiley, an online library

It didn't need to be written by them to be used by them nor to be unscientific trash.

Well include me because in my recollection, Emily did not use that article and in fact, it counters her push for tight regulation of third trimester abortions.

Two articles have been posted. Unquestionably "different" research, but amazingly, same style, same flawed method of getting participants.

You don’t like the methodology, then YOU propose a methodology for collecting data from women who have undergone traumatic third trimester abortions.

You think the medical records aren't coded for why it was done? If there was actual reason to think they were breaking the rules the attorney general could have subpoenaed anonymized records.

But we get two studies that are incredibly easy to manipulate attempting to show improper abortions. And neither is written remotely like scientific research.

You can do studies that quantify function and ability and loss or gain of these after an illness or accident or medical treatment. You cannot do the same so easily with how it makes you feel. Or why you made the choices you made.

But that's not what these purport to be. They are being presented as "proof" of on-demand third-trimester abortion.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Here's the thing. The problem with RvW is it causes collateral damage. The problem with abortion-on-demand is it causes collateral damage. Both of those things are true. To have a reasonable discussion, each side needs to come to grips with the other side's explanation for why it's right, which means each side needs to come to grips with its own preferred policy's collateral damage. A sensible case for either option can only be a case of the form, "Your collateral damage is worse than our collateral damage because <fill in rest of argument>.". But a bunch of people in this thread have been prattling about the meaning of "Elective" as a way to make believe their own side causes no collateral damage so they'll be relieved of the burden of proving the other side's collateral damage is worse than theirs. So what I'm saying is, don't do that. Face your own collateral damage squarely.

Back up. You first need to establish what collateral damage is occurring before you can make claims about it.

 

[Toni]

I fact-checked with Advanced Search and found every recent use of "elective" by Emily

The problem here (and I DO blame this on direct dishonesty) is that Emily doesn't use the word elective, she uses the words "on-demand".

On-demand is the next stage of the conflation, that happens after the "elective" has already been made to jump the track. She implies the false connection while cleverly not saying the word that the misconceptopm arose around.

Of course, it's still taking the false data or supporting it with notions built around the false interpretation but it cleverly avoids a direct association with the original liars.

The problem for her is that the only way to get to the perception of it is to either do as we have been discussing and relying on unscientific trash 'studies' in a format that can push any line, or the conflation between "elective" and on-demand.

There might be a third way some fool or idiot or liar-for-jesus comes to repeat such trash, but it will be adjacent to the last two because Bomb, at least has already admitted that statistically, these events don't actually happen except as a function of the rule of large numbers and has entirely failed to stop making the claim that something needs to be done about them. Will he stop making the claim though? Nope.

Neither Bomb nor Emily wrote the article lined above. The article,
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health
Volume 54, Issue 2 pp. 38-45 was then published in Wiley, an online library

It didn't need to be written by them to be used by them nor to be unscientific trash.

Well include me because in my recollection, Emily did not use that article and in fact, it counters her push for tight regulation of third trimester abortions.

Two articles have been posted. Unquestionably "different" research, but amazingly, same style, same flawed method of getting participants.

You don’t like the methodology, then YOU propose a methodology for collecting data from women who have undergone traumatic third trimester abortions.

You think the medical records aren't coded for why it was done? If there was actual reason to think they were breaking the rules the attorney general could have subpoenaed anonymized records.

But we get two studies that are incredibly easy to manipulate attempting to show improper abortions. And neither is written remotely like scientific research.

You can do studies that quantify function and ability and loss or gain of these after an illness or accident or medical treatment. You cannot do the same so easily with how it makes you feel. Or why you made the choices you made.

But that's not what these purport to be. They are being presented as "proof" of on-demand third-trimester abortion.

What the fuck are you talking about?

What the fuck do you mean by ‘improper abortion?’

What authority, background, credentials do you hold to term that women late term abortions obtained for medical reasons relating to the viability of the fetus as ‘ improper?’

 

[Toni]

The problem is that there's no actual measurements in the study, and no way to validate any of it.

The "study" is just straight up unscientific trash.

I've heard a lot of stories in my life, true and false and everything in between.

I've met a LOT of "Liars for Jesus", too, and women who would as much lie about these sorts of things, ESPECIALLY if they thought it would "save the children".

I'm going to file this right in the circular file where it belongs, not because I believe that late term abortions don't happen at all (they do, very rarely) or that every story there is a lie, but because I think that some scattered unconfirmed anecdotes fail to establish even veracity let alone precedence. That it is unscientific trash.

The study relies on personal narratives. It is not a study in physics or chemistry or statistics.

Personal narratives are not scientific studies.

There is no control.

No need for one.

There are interviews with women who. Describe their experiences.

We read about people describing their experiences all the time and don’t call it trash.

We are not calling their experiences "trash". We are calling the "research" trash.

The study does not pretend to be anything other than what it was: narratives by individuals who all had a similar life event.

It purports to be about why women had third trimester abortions.

You answer that with numbers, not with personal accounts.

I suppose that these narratives could be confirmed if the women offered their medical records up. Do you suppose the homeless woman had access ito her medical records? Do you suppose the woman whose doctors kept lying to her about the severity of the abnormalities of her fetus has access to accurate medical records?

Did you not notice that nothing in the study design ensured that they were actually talking to someone who had a third trimester abortion, let alone whether what she said matches up with reality.

It would have been trivial for outside actors to contaminate the data.

Tell me you know nothing about social science without telling me you know nothing about social sciences.

Or human beings.

Or women.

Or pregnancy.

Or abortion.

 

[laughing dog]

I fact-checked with Advanced Search and found every recent use of "elective" by Emily

The problem here (and I DO blame this on direct dishonesty) is that Emily doesn't use the word elective, she uses the words "on-demand".

On-demand is the next stage of the conflation, that happens after the "elective" has already been made to jump the track. She implies the false connection while cleverly not saying the word that the misconceptopm arose around.

Of course, it's still taking the false data or supporting it with notions built around the false interpretation but it cleverly avoids a direct association with the original liars.

The problem for her is that the only way to get to the perception of it is to either do as we have been discussing and relying on unscientific trash 'studies' in a format that can push any line, or the conflation between "elective" and on-demand.

There might be a third way some fool or idiot or liar-for-jesus comes to repeat such trash, but it will be adjacent to the last two because Bomb, at least has already admitted that statistically, these events don't actually happen except as a function of the rule of large numbers and has entirely failed to stop making the claim that something needs to be done about them. Will he stop making the claim though? Nope.

Neither Bomb nor Emily wrote the article lined above. The article,
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health
Volume 54, Issue 2 pp. 38-45 was then published in Wiley, an online library

It didn't need to be written by them to be used by them nor to be unscientific trash.

Well include me because in my recollection, Emily did not use that article and in fact, it counters her push for tight regulation of third trimester abortions.

Two articles have been posted. Unquestionably "different" research, but amazingly, same style, same flawed method of getting participants.

You don’t like the methodology, then YOU propose a methodology for collecting data from women who have undergone traumatic third trimester abortions.

You think the medical records aren't coded for why it was done? If there was actual reason to think they were breaking the rules the attorney general could have subpoenaed anonymized records.

But we get two studies that are incredibly easy to manipulate attempting to show improper abortions. And neither is written remotely like scientific research.

Clearly, you did not read the cited article. From the discussion section in the article

While third-trimester abortion is relatively uncommon in the United States compared to first-trimester abortion, investigation into how some pregnant people come to need an abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy reveals the irreducibility of that need as well as key similarities to the experience of needing a abortion in the first or second trimester. These findings make a strong case for a social conceptualization of abortion not in terms of trimesters but, instead, as an option throughout pregnancy.

From the conclusion section of the abstract (which comes before the article):

The inherent limits of medical knowledge and the infeasibility of ensuring early pregnancy recognition in all cases illustrate the impossibility of eliminating the need for third-trimester abortion.

I think it should be effing obvious that the purpose of this study was not to show "improper" abortions. If anything, it is showing the need for third trimester abortions.

The inherent limits of medical knowledge and the infeasibility of ensuring early pregnancy recognition in all cases illustrate the impossibility of eliminating the need for third-trimester abortion.

I have no clue what how you think scientific research is supposed to be written. The journal is peer-reviewed which suggests the article meets the standards of the profession. The purpose of the study was not to test hypothesis but to glean reasons ("pathways") to third trimester abortions. The investigator screened participants

I screened prospective participants who called the study phone number for eligibility. To be eligible, participants had to be over 18 years of age, be comfortable speaking in English, and have obtained an abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy.

So unless you have evidence that this investigator did not verify for actual abortions, it seems to me that your criticisms have no basis in fact.

 

[Toni]

I fact-checked with Advanced Search and found every recent use of "elective" by Emily

The problem here (and I DO blame this on direct dishonesty) is that Emily doesn't use the word elective, she uses the words "on-demand".

On-demand is the next stage of the conflation, that happens after the "elective" has already been made to jump the track. She implies the false connection while cleverly not saying the word that the misconceptopm arose around.

Of course, it's still taking the false data or supporting it with notions built around the false interpretation but it cleverly avoids a direct association with the original liars.

The problem for her is that the only way to get to the perception of it is to either do as we have been discussing and relying on unscientific trash 'studies' in a format that can push any line, or the conflation between "elective" and on-demand.

There might be a third way some fool or idiot or liar-for-jesus comes to repeat such trash, but it will be adjacent to the last two because Bomb, at least has already admitted that statistically, these events don't actually happen except as a function of the rule of large numbers and has entirely failed to stop making the claim that something needs to be done about them. Will he stop making the claim though? Nope.

Neither Bomb nor Emily wrote the article lined above. The article,
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health
Volume 54, Issue 2 pp. 38-45 was then published in Wiley, an online library

It didn't need to be written by them to be used by them nor to be unscientific trash.

Well include me because in my recollection, Emily did not use that article and in fact, it counters her push for tight regulation of third trimester abortions.

Two articles have been posted. Unquestionably "different" research, but amazingly, same style, same flawed method of getting participants.

You don’t like the methodology, then YOU propose a methodology for collecting data from women who have undergone traumatic third trimester abortions.

You think the medical records aren't coded for why it was done? If there was actual reason to think they were breaking the rules the attorney general could have subpoenaed anonymized records.

But we get two studies that are incredibly easy to manipulate attempting to show improper abortions. And neither is written remotely like scientific research.

Clearly, you did not read the cited article. From the discussion section in the article

While third-trimester abortion is relatively uncommon in the United States compared to first-trimester abortion, investigation into how some pregnant people come to need an abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy reveals the irreducibility of that need as well as key similarities to the experience of needing a abortion in the first or second trimester. These findings make a strong case for a social conceptualization of abortion not in terms of trimesters but, instead, as an option throughout pregnancy.

From the conclusion section of the abstract (which comes before the article):

The inherent limits of medical knowledge and the infeasibility of ensuring early pregnancy recognition in all cases illustrate the impossibility of eliminating the need for third-trimester abortion.

I think it should be effing obvious that the purpose of this study was not to show "improper" abortions. If anything, it is showing the need for third trimester abortions.

The inherent limits of medical knowledge and the infeasibility of ensuring early pregnancy recognition in all cases illustrate the impossibility of eliminating the need for third-trimester abortion.

I have no clue what how you think scientific research is supposed to be written. The journal is peer-reviewed which suggests the article meets the standards of the profession. The purpose of the study was not to test hypothesis but to glean reasons ("pathways") to third trimester abortions. The investigator screened participants

I screened prospective participants who called the study phone number for eligibility. To be eligible, participants had to be over 18 years of age, be comfortable speaking in English, and have obtained an abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy.

So unless you have evidence that this investigator did not verify for actual abortions, it seems to me that your criticisms have no basis in fact.

I think Loren believes everything should be written in 1’s and 0’s.

 

[Elixir]

I am almost certain that at the time of the termination, the embryo or fetus( depending on how far along the pregnancy was) was quite small, probably at most 2 inches and just beginning to develop features that we would see as human.

Well, I feel 2” tall sometimes, and when told that I’m beginning to develop features that could be seen as human, it’s not always said in a hopeful tone of voice. But that doesn’t mean I want to be terminated!
I guess the only difference between me and Mr/Ms 2” fetus is that if terminated I am more likely to suffer in pain than they are, being blessed with more highly developed pain sensing apparatus. Still, decisions about whether to save the mom or the fetus remain resistant to rules, ethical, moral or legal. Maybe people should be responsible for themselves?

 

[Arctish]

If a doctor agrees that premature delivery is safer for her and her fetus than waiting around a few more weeks and seeing what happens, are you going to call it an attempted murder if they go with the early delivery plan?

I don’t think there are many posters here who would say that’s murder, or claim qualification to make such a judgment based on those few words.
Obviously it needs an urgently convened meeting of specially licensed practitioners in related specialties, to hear arguments and render a proper verdict.

I think our governments, both state and federal, are full of people who would call it attempted murder or reckless endangerment or depraved indifference, and want to prosecute women and their health care providers to the full extent of the draconian laws they write.

I think restricting or eliminating a woman's ability to make choices about her own pregnancy results in a kind of forced servitude.

I think the government has a legitimate interest in protecting a developing fetus that has reached the point of viability but the Rights of the fetus should never outweigh the Rights of the woman carrying it.

And I think that the people best suited to make decisions about a pregnant woman's health care are the woman herself and her doctor. State medical boards can define best practices and set standards of care but they can't predict all the permutations of a medical condition as it develops in each individual. Not even a personal physician who has been caring for one specific person for years can do that.

Pro-life legislation may look nice on paper. The thoughts behind them may be noble. But if those laws preemptively make some procedures unavailable by criminalizing them out of sentimentality, they will very quickly become Pro-death when put into effect. Doctors need the full range of options to be available when deciding which is the best one for an individual patient.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Perhaps you'd favor the bias-free scientific approach of subpoenaing all the medical records of all the abortion providers in America and compelling all their clients to submit to cross-examination about their motives so we could all finally lay our hands on some dependable statistics.

No, I would favor the bias-free scientific approach of getting the respondents, or presenting the response rates.

They distributed fliers to multiple locations. The response rate therefore is going to be a reasonable approximation of zero.