Roe v Wade is on deck

[Elixir]

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”?

Reasonabile ability to survive outside the womb

Ah. Reasonability judges.
Sounds, reasonably FASCIST.

I'm sure that you meant that after the fact, should such doctor be found to have acted unreasonably in depriving a fetus of life, they should suffer consequences. Again, sounds reasonable.

Who should have standing to make the allegation of "unreasonable action causing fetal death", Emily?
Only the mother?
Other Doctors?
Strangers? Relatives?
Random cops?
All of the above?

Once you decide that, how does does such an allegation get elevated to a criminal charge?
Convene a grand jury, just hand it to the DA, or what?
Who does it benefit?

 

[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.

 

[bilby]

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.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2022/maternal-mortality-rates-2022.htm

In 2022, 817 women died of maternal causes in the United States, compared with 1,205 in 2021, 861 in 2020, 754 in 2019, and 658 in 2018. The maternal mortality rate for 2022 decreased to 22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with a rate of 32.9 in 2021

The CDC doesn't appear to collect data on the number of people who die from "waking up in the morning", but I would hazard a guess that it's significantly fewer than 20 per 100,000.

My apologies for introducing facts and data into this thread. Please resume your regularly scheduled pointless bickering.

 

[Emily Lake]

I have looked around some, and found it so hard to find stats for “elective third trimester abortions”, it makes me suspect that there are no such stats.

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. Several states refuse to report statistics at all. You can't force medical establishments to share medical statistics - some participate voluntarily, so only report those few things that are required by law to be reported.

Third trimester abortions are quite rare regardless of reason; I've repeatedly acknowledged that voluntary third trimester abortions without a medical indication are even more rare.

The only way to collect such data is by voluntary participation in a survey. What are you going to do? Blast every childbearing-age woman in the us with an email asking them if they've ever had a third trimester abortion and if they and the baby were both health at the time? Who the hell do you think is going to answer?

It's unreasonable and illogical of you to demand that I must produce statistically valid evidence of something that is virtually impossible to collect data on. The lack of statistically valid data from such a situation does not imply that it does not exist. It follows from that, that the existence of any data at all, even if not statistically valid in nature, should be considered as at least demonstrating that such data does, in fact exist - even if it is so rare as to be unlikely to be documented. It's certainly less rare the likelihood of a Higgs being observed. It's less likely than having stray asteroid land in your yard.

In this context, I view voluntary third trimester abortions as being unmeasurably rare - but I also contend that they should not be allowed.

You argue that they should be allowed, and they're so rare that it doesn't matter if they're ethical or not, and that even no doctor would perform such a voluntary abortion because it would be unethical. By agreeing that it is unethical for a doctor to perform a voluntary third trimester abortion, you are tacitly agreeing that there exist some situations in which a third trimester abortion is 1) not medically necessary and 2) should not be allowed.

You have tacitly admitted that some abortions are neither necessary or allowable.

You have cited deaths from abortion. But you haven't provided a statistically valid rate of that occurring. Rather, you've provided an appeal to some. You've asserted that some people have died due to total abortion bans - but all of your appeals by hypothetical scenario have relied on a non-voluntary situation. You persistently rely on an appeal to emotion and paint a picture of someone dying due to an emergency medical intervention being denied. You persistently relied on a scenario that fits into the range for which nearly everyone agrees - only 8% of people disagree with that scenario. Only 8% of people would refuse treatment to a woman who was in imminent risk of death in the absence of the removal of her fetus.

You haven't even tried to justify and defend a scenario in which 81% of people think it should be illegal. And you've repeatedly rejected for consideration those very scenarios as being unethical, by asserting that no doctor would perform them because they are unethical.

At the end of the day, your argument from harm/benefit analysis is moot, because 1) you have not provided any statistically valid data on the rate at which maternal deaths due to a denial of abortion and because 2) you have tacitly agreed that some abortions are not medically necessary and should not be allowed.

The only remaining exercise is to establish a preliminary set of guidelines for what characterizes an abortion that should not be allowed.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Alternatively, you can provide a declarative statement that your personally held subjective belief is that abortions should be allowed at any point in a pregnancy, for any reason whatsoever, with no regard to whether that reason is ethically or morally sound.

Simply provide clear, succinct, direct, and unambiguous agreement with the following two statements:

1. A woman's right to an abortion shall not be infringed if she decides that the ghost of Sun Tzu appeared to her during a psychotic break and told her that her fetus was going to grow up to snap his fingers and magic 90% of the earth's population out of existence and that the fate of the entire planet hinged on her having an immediate abortion.
2. A woman's right to an abortion shall not be infringed if she just wakes up three days before her due date and decides she doesn't want to have a kid.

 

[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.

That's your argument.

With the understanding that the range of uncertainty is high, let's stipulate that it's representative of the percent of third trimester abortions that are given to healthy mothers with healthy fetuses. That makes it 2/28 healthy 3rd Trimester abortions, or 7.14%.

The abortion rate in 2022 was 15.4 per 1000 women age 15-44 years old. That's 1.54% of the females in the US. In 2022, there were approximately 66 million women aged 15-44 in the US. That means that there were 1,016,400 abortions in 2022, but let's call it 1 million for simplicity. 7% of abortions occur after 13 weeks, 1% after 20 weeks. The number after 26 weeks would be lower, let's say 0.1% - that would be 1,000 third trimester abortions in 2022. So of those, 7.14% are for healthy babies and healthy mothers - that's 71.4 total cases.

In 2022 817 women died of maternal causes in the United States in the US. Maternal causes is defined as "the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and the site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes". That means this includes women who die from a miscarriage, or in a complication of delivery or any of several other scenarios that are not directly attributable to have been denied an abortion. That's the counterpoint argument that you've been making, that more women die from being denied an abortion that the number who are health and terminate a healthy fetus in the third trimester - that more good is done by having completely unlimited abortion access than by implementing ANY reasonable ethical restrictions at all. According to the CDC, there were 216 maternal deaths during pregnancy and 132 during delivery, over a 3 year period. During that same period, 353 occurred between 1 and 42 days post-partum, where post-partum includes post-termination. 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. Let's round that down to 110 per year for simplicity. From that same stat sheet, 84% of deaths were preventable. The definitions between the two sources are different, and their measures don't exactly line up... but I'm figuring somewhere around half of maternal deaths occur during pregnancy or delivery, so that would include denied abortions. Let's assume that ALL of the remaining have are avoidable, since post-partum depression is included in the description of maternal death. That would mean that 68% of the deaths during pregnancy and delivery were NOT avoidable - they'd have happened even if an abortion were available. That leaves 35.2 abortions due to denial of abortion.

By my measure, more healthy fetuses are aborted in the third trimester by healthy moms than die due to denial of abortion. Therefore, your viewpoint has a higher harm ration than mine.

 

[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.

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 to push your proposal, because it masks the truth that you wish to force a woman to face an unwanted risk and pain in order to satisfy your irrational religious beliefs.

 

[laughing dog]

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”?

 

[laughing dog]

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.

 

[Elixir]

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?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

So what? Who besides you and the idiot Catholic Church is arguing that not reproducing is a disorder?

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.

Nonsense. If evolution had given us a drive to reproduce then contraceptives wouldn't be a $20 billion a year business. Evolution never gave a rat's ass whether we want to reproduce, just as long as we want to have sex.

Evolution hasn't given us a desire yet. Doesn't mean it won't. And contraceptives would still be big business--a couple that wants 4 kids rather than 2 will buy just about as much contraception.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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. 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.

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.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

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.

 

[Elixir]

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.

WHO IS MORE QUALIFIED THAN DOCTORS TO MAKE THAT DETERMINATION?

Please show how rules with specific legal consequences (laws) will result in a significant reduction in the so far unevidenced number of “optional” abortions that you would like to prevent, Emily.
Your “personhood” argument is pure vaporware, and not fit basis for laws in the first place.
You don’t think things through. You find some act reprehensible and advocate harsh criminal penalties for it without any consideration for the actual effects of such witch hunting tools.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Which is a duh! No doctor is going to perform anything at that level without documenting why. That's simply standard medical practice.

You're splitting disingenuous hairs, Loren.

Doctors will document procedures, because that's how they get paid. But the don't always document conditions or medical necessity. Cosmetic surgeons don't document medical indications - the reason is "the patient wants it".

At present, in states with no restrictions on abortion at all, the doctor doesn't have to write down any justification or reason for the service. They document the procedure performed, not the medical indication for the procedure.

And they're not going to indicate that in the chart?!?!

What do you think they're going to document when the only reason is "mom wants it"? What diagnosis code goes with that?

I'm not experienced in medical coding.

We already have plenty of procedures that have no indication other than patient request. Some that insurance even pays for: sterilization.

Some digging, I think I understand what I'm looking at. The procedure code will start with 10A0, additional letters for how it was done. Diagnosis code is Z33.2

 

[Elixir]

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.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Don't be stupid. The objective is DON'T SACRIFICE WOMEN.

No women are being sacrificed.

We have women dying because an abortion was denied even though it would be permitted by the law. Sacrificed on the altar of making sex dangerous.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No women are being sacrificed.

Right, they’re basically being murdered, without the godly benefits of sacrifice.

In what way does MY PROPOSAL murder women?

By making doctors scared to perform necessary abortions. We are already seeing it, you can't say it isn't going to happen.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.